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FIRST ANNUAL REPORT 

OF THE 

EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, 

WITH ACCOMPANYING PAPERS. 
1879-80. 

PRESENTED AT THE ANNUAL MEETING OF THE 
INSTITUTE, 

Boston, May 15, 1880. 




CAMBRIDGE: 
JOHN WILSON AND SON, 

SHnttattg $xm. 
1880. 

0, 



i 



CONTENTS. 



Organization of the Institute, and List of Officers and 
Members 

Annual Report of the Executive Committee 



Papers : 

I. A Study of the Houses of the American Aborigines with 
a Scheme of Exploration of the Ruins in New Mexico 
and elsewhere. By Lewis H. Morgan 

II. Ancient Walls on Monte Leone, in the Province of 
Grosseto, Italy. By W. J. Stillman 



III. Archaeological Notes on Greek Shores, Part I. By 
Joseph Thacher Clarke 



PRELIMINARY STATEMENT AND LIST 
OF MEMBERS. 



JN April, 1879, a circular was issued, stating that 
it was proposed to establish a society for the 
purpose of furthering and directing archaeological 
investigation and research, and setting forth in 
general terms the objects contemplated and methods 
suggested for procedure. This circular requested 
the persons to whom it was addressed to join the 
proposed society, and was signed by 

Charles W. Eliot. Martin Brimmer. 

Alexander Agassiz. T. G. Appleton. 

W. Endicott, Jr. E. W. Gurney. 



More than one hundred persons having signified 
their desire to become members of the society, a 
meeting was held at No. 50 State Street, Boston, 
May 10, 1879. Remarks were made by many of 
the gentlemen present, explaining the aims in view 
in the formation of such a society, and a committee 



W. W. Goodwin. 
Augustus Lowell. 
F. W. Putnam. 



Henry P. Kidder. 
C. C. Perkins. 
C. E. Norton. 



6 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



was appointed to draw up a constitution for the 
society. This committee consisted of 



At an adjourned meeting, held May 17, they re- 
ported the following " Regulations " : — 

1. The Archaeological Institute of America is formed for the 
purpose of promoting and directing archaeological investigation 
and research, — by the sending out of expeditions for special 
investigation, by aiding the efforts of independent explorers, by 
publication of reports of the results of the expeditions which the 
Institute may undertake or promote, and by any other means 
which may from time to time appear desirable. 

2. The Archaeological Institute shall consist of Life Members, 
being such persons as shall contribute at one time not less than 
$100 to its funds, and of Annual Members, who shall contribute 
not less than $10. Classes of honorary and corresponding 
members may be formed at the discretion of the government of 
the Institute, and under such regulations as it may impose. 

3. The government of the Institute shall be vested in an 
Executive Committee, consisting of a president, a vice-president, 
a treasurer, a secretary, and five ordinary members. 

4. The president, the vice-president, and the five ordinary 
members of the Executive Committee shall be chosen by the 
ballot of the life and annual members at the annual meeting of 
the Institute, and shall hold office for one year, or until their 
successors are chosen. They shall be eligible for re-election. 

The treasurer and the secretary shall be chosen by the presi- 
dent, the vice-president, and the five ordinary members of the 
Executive Committee, and shall hold office at their pleasure. 

The government of the Institute shall be empowered to fill up, 
pro tempore by election, all vacancies in its body occasioned by 
the death or resignation o f any of its members. 



C. E. Norton. 

W. W. Greenough. 

S. A. Greene. 



H. W. Haynes. 

W. S. BlGELOW. 



PRELIMINARY STATEMENT. 



7 



5. The Executive Committee shall have full power to deter- 
mine the work to be undertaken by the Institute, and the mode 
of its accomplishment ; to employ agents, and to expend all the 
funds of the Institute for the purpose for which it is formed ; but 
it shall not have the power to incur any debt on behalf of the 
Institute. 

It shall make its own regulations, and determine its own 
methods of procedure. 

The secretary shall keep a careful record of its transactions, 
and the committee shall submit a full written report concerning 
them at each annual meeting. 

6. The accounts of the Institute shall be submitted annually 
to two auditors, who shall be elected for that purpose by the 
members of the Institute at the annual meeting, and who shall 
attest by their signatures the accuracy of the said accounts. 

7. The annual meeting shall be held in Boston on the third 
Saturday of May, at eleven o'clock a.m. 

8. Special meetings of the Institute may be called at any time 
at the discretion of the Executive Committee. 

9. Subscriptions and donations may be paid to the treasurer 
or any member of the Executive Committee, and no person not 
a life member shall be entitled to vote at the annual meeting 
who has not paid his subscription for the past year. The year 
shall be considered as closing with the termination of the annual 
meeting, from which time the subscription for the ensuing year 
shall become due. 

10. An amendment of the regulations shall require the vote 
of three fourths of an annual meeting. 

It was then voted "that those persons present 
constitute themselves ' The Archaeological Institute 
of America ' under the above regulations ; " and also, 
"that after the number of members shall have in- 
creased to three hundred and fifty, no more shall 
be admitted except when elected by the Executive 
Committee." 



8 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



The members then proceeded to ballot for officers, 
and the following persons, who had been nominated 
by a special committee, were elected: — 

President Charles Eliot Norton. 

Vice-President Martin Brimmer. 

Ordinary Members. 

Francis Parkman. 
H. W. Haynes. Alexander Agassiz. 

W. W. Goodwin. William R. Ware. 

The Executive Committee held their first meeting 
immediately after the adjournment of the general 
meeting, and Mr. O. W. Peabody was chosen treasurer, 
and Mr. E. H. Greenleaf, secretary. 

At a subsequent meeting of the Executive Com- 
mittee a circular was submitted and adopted for 
publication, in order to make the existence and 
aims of the Institute more widely known. The 
substance of this circular was as follows: — 

It is desired by the founders and existing members of the 
society that its lists should include associates from all parts of 
the country. The objects of the Institute have no narrow local 
interest. It hopes, by its work, to increase the knowledge of 
the early history of mankind, to quicken the interest in classical 
and Biblical studies, to promote an acquaintance with the pre- 
historic antiquities of our own country, and to enlarge the 
resources of our universities and museums by such collections 
of works of art and remains of antiquity as it may be enabled 
to make. 

To perform satisfactorily even a small part of this work, large 
sums of money are required. 



PRELIMINARY STATEMENT. 



9 



The expenses of exploration of the sites of ancient civilization 
in the Old World or the New are necessarily considerable. 

The Institute, therefore, asks for and claims the support, not 
only of specialists, scholars, and men of science, but of all 
persons, men and women, throughout the country who take an 
interest in the objects it has in view. 

The Executive Committee have reason for confidence that, 
if a sufficient sum be provided, an expedition of such character 
as shall be honorable to the science and scholarship of the 
country may be speedily organized. 

They desire, consequently, to receive large accessions to the 
membership, especially of life members. 

Any person wishing to become a life or annual member of the 
Institute is requested to forward his or her name and full address 
to the secretary (Edward H. Greenleaf, Museum of Fine Arts, 
Boston, Mass.), together with the sum requisite for membership, 
for which a receipt will be returned by the treasurer. 

The following list contains the names of all 
members at the present date : — 



LIFE MEMBERS. 



Alexander Agassiz. 
Charles S. Bradlee. 
George B. Chase. 
M. F. Force. 
H. L. Higginson. 
Miss Alice S. Hooper. 1 
John W. McCoy. 
D. O. Mills. 



Clarence B. Moore. 
Otis Norcross. 
Francis E. Parker. 
Stephen Salisbury, Jr. 
Quincy A. Shaw. 
Edward Spencer. 
Clement A. Walker. 



1 Deceased. 



10 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



ANNUAL MEMBERS. 



Francis E. Abbot. 
William F. Allen. 
James Barr Ames. 
William Amory. 
William Aspinwall. 
Gilbert Attwood. 
J. T. Bailey. 
Ad. F. Bandelier. 
Francis Bartlett. 
Mrs. E. H. Bigelow. 
Timothy Bigelow. 
William Sturgis Bigelow. 
Charles P. Bowditch. 
Martin Brimmer. 
William S. Bullard. 
Elmer H. Capen. 
L. P. di Cesnola. 
C. F. Choate. 
Samuel C. Cobb. 
Benjamin R. Curtis. 
George William Curtis. 
C. H. Dalton. 
Henry Davenport. 
Thomas Davidson. 
E. S. Dixwell. 
Edmund D wight. 
L. Dyer. 

Ralph Waldo Emerson. 
William Endicott, Jr. 
Dana Estes. 
Glendower Evans. 
Charles Fairchild. 
Miss Alice C. Fletcher. 
John M. Forbes. 
W. H. Forbes. 



Edward G. Gardiner. 

D. C. Gilman. 
Edwin L. Godkin. 
Richard H. Lawrence. 
Henry Cabot Lodge. 
W. P. P. Longfellow. 
Charles G. Loring. 
Thornton K. Lothrop. 
Augustus Lowell. 
George G. Lowell. 
John Lowell. 

Miss Abby W. May. 
Charles H. Moore. 
Lewis H. Morgan. 

E. R. Mudge. 
Charles Eliot Norton. 
James R. Osgood. 
Robert Treat Paine, Jr. 
Francis W. Palfrey. 
Harvey D. Parker. 
Francis Parkman. 
Oliver W. Peabody. 
Charles C. Perkins. 

J. M. Peirce. 
Charles L. Peirson. 
Eleazer Franklin Pratt. 
Waldo S. Pratt. 

F. W. Putnam. 
Frederick H. Rindge. 
William B. Rogers. 
Edward E. Salisbury. 
Stephen Salisbury. 
Philip H. Sears. 

J. B. Sewall. 
N. S. Shaler. 



PRELIMINARY 



STA TEMENT 



Mrs. G. H. Shaw. 
Walter Smith. 
H. G. Spaulding. 
W. W. Goodwin. 
Horace Gray. 
George Z. Gray. 
Samuel A. Green. 
Edward H. Greenleaf. 
Richard C. Greenleaf. 
W. W. Greenough. 
E. W. Gurney. 
Henry W. Haynes. 
T. W. Higginson. 
R. M. Hodges. 
C. D. Homans. 
Edward W. Hooper. 
E. N. Horsford. 
H. O. Houghton. 
Ernest Jackson. 
Reverdy Johnson. 



Henry P. Kidder. 
S. R. Koehler. 
Russell Sturgis. 
Richard Sullivan. 
J. H. Thayer. 
S. Lothrop Thorndike. 
Philip Valentini. 
George W. Wales. 
William R. Ware. 
G. Washington Warren. 
Samuel D. Warren. 
Edward Wheelwright. 
John Williams White. 
Mrs. Henry Whitman. 
George Wigglesworth. 
Justin Winsor. 
Robert C. Winthrop. 
John Woodbury. 
Theodore D. Woolsey. 



To the Members of the Archceological Institute of 
America. 



HE Executive Committee elected by you a 



year ago have the honor to present to you 
the first annual report of the proceedings of the 
Institute. 

The statement preceding this report exhibits the 
number of life and annual members of the Institute. 
Your committee did not altogether regret that the 
comparatively small number of members assured 
them of but a very moderate income during the 
first year of the existence of the society. Delib- 
eration was required as to the best plans for future 
work, and careful consideration of many projects, 
all of them of interest, and most of them offering 
promise of good results, but all involving large ex- 
penditure. 

But although the funds at their disposal were 
small, your committee have been able, by means of 
them, to secure contributions to archaeological 
science both in America and in Europe, which 
they trust may be regarded as a worthy beginning 
of the work of the Institute. These contributions 
appear in the papers attached to this report. 




14 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 

The first of them is an essay by the Honorable 
Lewis H. Morgan on the System of House-building 
practised by the Indians, and on the inferences to 
be drawn from it in regard to their social condi- 
tion and habits of life. Mr. Morgan has so long 
been recognized as one of the first authorities in 
this country upon many points respecting the 
aboriginal races of this continent that your com- 
mittee, shortly after the organization of the Institute, 
asked from him the expression of his views in regard 
to the most important field in America to be entered 
upon by the Institute, and as to the most useful 
direction to be given to such investigations as it 
might undertake. The accompanying paper em- 
bodies Mr. Morgan's answer to this application ; and 
the recommendations of your committee, in a later 
part of this report, are in accordance with his 
suggestions. 

Your committee, having learned that Mr. Joseph 
Thacher Clarke, of Boston, was visiting the Greek 
lands for the sake of studying the monuments and 
ruins of Doric architecture, with the object of 
obtaining the materials for a much-needed critical 
history of the Doric style, and learning further that 
the means at Mr. Clarke's disposal were too limited 
to enable him to do all that was desirable to com- 
plete his special investigation, determined to supply 
him with funds to assist him in his work. They 
regarded this work as coming legitimately within 
the objects of the Institute. They proposed also to 



REPORT OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE, 1 5 

obtain from Mr. Clarke a report upon the archaeo- 
logical aspects of the sites visited by him. Many of 
these sites lie out of the usual track of travel or 
of trade ; most of them possess features of interest 
to the archaeologist; some of them offer promising 
ground for exploration. A report upon their actual 
condition from this point of view would be of in- 
terest. Mr. Clarke's field of study was to embrace 
the coast of Asia Minor, the Archipelago, Greece, 
Corfu, Magna Graecia, and Sicily. The commission 
of the Institute did not reach him till a portion of this 
region had already been visited, so that in regard to 
it he had only the notes taken for his special object 
to depend upon ; another portion of the region is to 
be visited the present year; but in presenting his 
" Archaeological Notes on Greek Shores, Part I.," 
as the second paper in this volume, your committee 
have pleasure in the conviction that these Notes 
constitute a substantial addition to knowledge re- 
specting the matters which they treat. 

In the summer of 1877 M r - R. P. Pullan pub- 
lished, in the London " Academy," a letter giving 
an account of some remarkable and hitherto unde- 
scribed ancient walls in the province of Grosseto in 
Italy, on a height called Monte Leone. The walls 
were very extensive, and Mr. Pullan estimated them 
as at least ten miles in circuit. In an appendix to 
the Introduction to the second edition of his " Cities 
and Cemeteries of Etruria," published in 1878, Mr. 
Dennis gives an account, derived from Mr. Pullan, 



i6 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



of this "ancient city," as he terms it, concluding 
with the words, "As attention has now been directed 
to this extensive inclosure, ... its character and 
antiquity cannot long remain a mystery." It seemed 
to your committee that it would be well to attempt 
to gain some more complete and accurate informa- 
tion in regard to these walls than that afforded by 
Mr. Pullan, even if it should prove impossible to 
solve the enigma of their character and antiquity. 
With this view they were glad to be able to enlist 
the services of Mr. W. J. Stillman, who is now 
resident in Florence, and who for many years has 
made a study of the so-called Pelasgic and Cyclopean 
walls in Italy and elsewhere, peculiarly fitting him 
for such an investigation as was required. It is 
with great satisfaction that your committee publish 
his interesting report, which strikingly confirms the 
opinion that there is a wealth of antiquity still to be 
discovered in Italy. " I am persuaded," says Mr. 
Dennis, — and there is no man living whose opinion 
on this subject is of greater weight, — " I am persuaded 
that Italy is not yet half explored ; that very much 
yet remains to be brought to light, — a persuasion 
founded upon such discoveries as this." 1 

Such has been the work of the past year. The 
work to be prosecuted during the coming year must 
depend in great measure upon the means provided 
for it by the members of the Institute, and by con- 

1 " Cities and Cemeteries of Etruria," second edition, 1878, vol. 1. p. 
[83. Mr. Dennis is speaking of discoveries at Castel d'Asso. 



REPORT OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 1/ 

tributions of individuals interested in archaeological 
studies. Relying upon being supplied with what 
may be required for undertakings worthy of the 
design with which the Institute was founded, your 
committee have carefully laid out a scheme of opera- 
tions, both in our own country and in the Old World, 
which they proceed to lay before you. 

Considering the recent origin of a true science of 
archaeology, and the even yet imperfect exploration 
of considerable portions of this continent, it is not 
surprising that a comprehensive survey of the 
antiquities of America and a scientific classification 
of them are still lacking. Many questions in regard 
to their origin, relations, and the inferences that may 
legitimately be drawn from them concerning the 
native race, of whom they are the only monuments, 
remain still unsolved. The remains of the works of 
the former inhabitants of the continent, with the 
exception of those in Mexico, Central America, and 
Peru, had, till within late years, excited comparatively 
little curiosity, and had nowhere been thoroughly 
investigated in a scientific spirit. The first treatise 
of importance on the antiquities of the United States 
was that of Squier and. Davis, on " The Ancient 
Monuments of the Mississippi Valley," issued by 
the Smithsonian Institution in 1848. Since that 
time the work of investigation and exploration has 
been more or less steadily carried on, over a con- 
stantly widening extent of territory, by members of 
the Government Surveys, by persons employed by 



1.8 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



the Smithsonian Institution, and more recently 
by the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology 
and Ethnology at Cambridge, and by numerous 
independent individuals. Information on the sub- 
ject has rapidly increased. A vast body of facts has 
been accumulated, and large and valuable collections 
of objects, from mounds, graves, villages, and pueblos, 
in different parts of the United States have been 
brought together. Probably little of essential im- 
portance in respect to the character of the remains 
of aboriginal life lies undiscovered. We have 
already at hand the needed material for the illus- 
tration of the modes of life of the native races, and 
for the determination of the various stages of civil- 
ization to which they attained ; but for the proper 
understanding and use of this mass of material much 
preliminary labor is still required. 

The study of American archaeology relates, indeed, 
to the monuments of a race that never attained to 
a high degree of civilization, and that has left 
no trustworthy records of continuous history. It 
was a race whose intelligence was for the most part 
of a low order, whose sentiments and emotions were 
confined within a narrow range, and whose imagina- 
tion was never quickened to find expression for itself 
in poetic or artistic forms of beauty. From what it 
was or what it did nothing is to be learned that has 
any direct bearing on the progress of civilization. 
Such interest as attaches to it is that which it pos- 
sesses in common with other early and undeveloped 



REPORT OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 19 

races of mankind. Our knowledge of the primitive 
conditions of man, and of the first steps in his 
advance out of savage conditions, is still imperfect ; 
and the study of the aboriginal life in America is 
essential to complete the history of the human race, 
as well as to gratify a legitimate curiosity concerning 
the condition of man on this continent previous to 
its discovery four hundred years ago. It may yet be 
possible to ascertain if there were remote affinities 
between the races of the Old World and the New, 
and we may expect with confidence to obtain, by 
means of properly directed inquiries, knowledge 
more definite than we now possess concerning the 
consanguinity, the historic relations, and the migra- 
tions of the people of the two divisions of the 
continent. 

In view of what has been done and is now doing 
by the Government, the Smithsonian Institution, 
and the Peabody Museum in the direct investigation 
of the ancient monuments of the country, your com- 
mittee believe that the work in America in which 
the Archaeological Institute should at first engage 
is that of the study of the actual life and customs 
of those Indian tribes which still occupy the seats of 
ancient habitancy, and exist as representatives of the 
builders of mounds and the dwellers in cave-houses 
and fortified villages. The investigation of their 
modes of life, their traditions, their intellectual and 
moral conceptions, is of prime importance for the 
light it may throw on the history and conditions of 



20 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



their predecessors, and of the kindred though more 
advanced tribes of Mexico : it is an indispensable 
accessory to the study of the monuments of earlier 
times. The opportunity for this investigation is 
rapidly passing away ; in the course of a very few 
years, with the extension of the railway system, which 
has already penetrated the regions inhabited by these 
tribes, and with the completer occupation of the 
land by our own race, it will have disappeared. The 
territory where the investigation may now be most 
profitably carried on lies within the boundaries of 
Colorado and New Mexico. A scientific study of 
the life of the Indians of this part of the country 
is the surest method for the determination of many 
unsolved questions concerning the archaeology of 
the continent. 

Your committee have, accordingly, taken steps to 
prepare for sending out to Colorado and New 
Mexico an agent properly qualified, by character 
and education, for the study of the life of the village 
Indians in this region. 

The cost of maintaining, for such time as may be 
required for the satisfactory performance of the 
work, an expedition consisting of a chief and his 
assistant, and of providing it with all necessary 
means for such special investigations as may be 
desirable, they estimate at not far from four thousand 
dollars. 

While the archaeology of America offers many 
instructive analogies with the prehistoric archaeology 



REPORT OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 21 



of the Old World, it affords nothing to compare with 
the historic archaeology of civilized man in Africa, 
Asia, and Europe. The study of the course of 
ancient civilization, as revealed in its monuments, 
must be pursued mainly in the lands whose borders 
form the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. Much 
as has been done in recent times for the exploration 
of these regions, and splendid as have been the 
results achieved, far more remains to be done. Many 
sites of high culture, centres of power and wealth 
for long periods, ruined by the blows of adverse 
fortune, till scarcely more was left of them than 
their names and a faint memory of former great- 
ness, have been in late centuries almost unvisited 
and wholly unexplored. The success that has at- 
tended the explorations of Dr. Schliemann, General 
di Cesnola, and the Germans at Olympia and Per- 
gamon, beside making a magnificent addition to our 
knowledge of classical history and art, is of the best 
promise as indicating that important, if less brilliant, 
discoveries await the intelligent investigators of 
other sites. The hill of Troy is not the only hill to 
yield a harvest — seges ubi Troja fuit — nor was 
Crete less rich or less famous for arts than Cyprus. 

Every new discovery, even if apparently of slight 
moment, adds precision to our knowledge of a past, 
the relations of which to the present draw closer as 
time goes on, and become more significant as that 
past becomes better and better understood. This is 
especially the case with respect to Greece. The 



22 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



influence of the Greek intelligence upon thought 
has vastly increased during the present century, and 
this is in large measure due to the actual increase 
of knowledge by discovery. The mastery of the 
Greek in every field of intellectual expression is 
acknowledged now as it was acknowledged by their 
conquerors. The vivida vis animi of the Greek still 
gains the day as of old. The higher the reach of 
modern effort, the plainer becomes the pre-eminence 
of the race that established the direction in which 
civilization is still proceeding, and advanced along 
many paths to a point beyond which their successors 
have not gone. 

The conditions of American life, separating us in 
great measure from direct acquaintance with the 
works of past times, and breaking for us many of 
the threads of tradition and association by w T hich 
the successive generations of men are bound one to 
another, interfere with the influence of many of the 
most powerful stimulants of the intelligence and the 
imagination, and tend to beget indifference to one 
of the chief sources of culture. The same barbaric 
spirit that asks, " What have we to do with abroad?" 
asks also, " What have we to do with antiquity ? " 

The existence of this spirit is not surprising, in 
view of the comparative neglect among us of 
ancient studies, and especially of those relating to 
the archaeology of Greece, in which is comprised 
the study of the origin and development of those 
arts which gave just expression to the Greek intel- 



REPORT OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 23 

ligence and sentiment, and afford such an image of 
national life and character as no other people has 
ever left of itself in its works. No regular instruc- 
tion in this fruitful field of study is provided at 
any of our universities, although to encourage the 
cultivation of it, as the introduction to a knowledge 
of the life and the history of the Greek race, might 
well be regarded as among the chief aims of an 
enlightened scheme of education. 

The promotion of this study is one of the objects 
of our organization. In order that it may engage in 
the work of investigation and exploration of the 
antiquities of Greece with good hope of making a 
valuable contribution to knowledge, and of quicken- 
ing and deepening the interest in the subject, it has 
been the duty of your committee to consider the 
various sites which offered promise of good results 
to the explorer. They have carefully surveyed the 
ground, and have had the invaluable assistance, in 
forming a judgment, of the suggestions and advice 
of the illustrious scholar, Professor Ernst Curtius. 

They have selected a site for exploration where 
they have every confidence that discoveries of interest 
may be made, and they are prepared to begin work 
upon it so soon as the members of the Institute or 
the public at large will supply them with the requi- 
site means. For the next year the committee desire 
for this purpose a sum of not less than eight thou- 
sand dollars. It does not seem to them desirable to 
state in full the nature of their plans, or even to 



24 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



name the site they have chosen, lest complications 
which might interfere with the carrying out of their 
designs should arise through publicity; but they 
will communicate fully upon the matter with any 
member of the Institute who may desire further 
information than is here given. 

Your committee hope that the work which they 
propose may be effectively supported, not merely 
for the sake of its influence on the progress of 
Greek studies, but also for the sake of the con- 
tributions it may make to the resources of our 
museums and universities. Such objects of ancient 
art as we may be fortunate enough to secure in the 
Old World would increase the collections of the 
Boston Museum of Fine Arts, or the select collection 
for purposes of instruction in Harvard College, or 
the collections of institutions in other cities, — such 
as the Metropolitan Museum of New York, or the 
Art Gallery of New Haven, in case the respective 
trustees of these institutions, or individuals interested 
in them, should contribute efficiently to the under- 
takings in which the Institute may engage. Such 
American antiquities as the expedition of the Insti- 
tute may obtain would find their proper place in 
the Peabody Museum at Cambridge. 

One method by which the objects of the Institute 
might be most serviceably promoted, and which 
your committee earnestly recommend, would be the 
establishment of scholarships of archaeology at Har- 
vard, Yale, Columbia, and other colleges. Two 



REPORT OF EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE. 2$ 

foundations, of from six hundred to one thousand 
dollars a year, to be awarded by the authorities of 
the respective universities to two competent young 
graduates, to be held by them for two or three 
years, while one of them should pursue the study 
of American, and the other of classical archaeology, 
would be the means not only of quickening interest 
in these pursuits among the students, but of training 
a succession of scholars who might be expected to 
advance the science to which they were devoted. 
During the last year a travelling studentship in 
archaeology has been established at Oxford through 
the generosity of an anonymous benefactor. Your 
committee trust that this example may be speedily 
followed here. 

France and Germany have their schools at Athens, 
where young scholars devote themselves, under the 
guidance of eminent masters, to studies and research 
in archaeology. The results that have followed from 
this training have been excellent ; and it is greatly to 
be desired, for the sake of American scholarship, 
that a similar American school may before long 
enter into honorable rivalry with those already 
established. 

The success of the Institute in the work it has 
undertaken depends upon the pecuniary support it 
may receive from its members and from the public. 
The number of members ought to be greatly in- 
creased. A thousand members would be but a 
comparatively small number to be supplied by the 



26 



A R CHJE olo gica l ixstitute. 



interest of the intelligent part of the national com- 
munity in the work which the Institute has in hand ; 
two thousand members would give to it ample funds 
for the successful prosecution of tasks of the highest 
interest. Your committee appeal to each member of 
the Institute to do whatever may lie in his power to 
increase the membership, and to the public at large 
for that generous support which it is ever ready to 
give to efforts to extend the boundaries of knowledge 
and to raise the standard of education. 

CHARLES ELIOT NORTON, President. 

MARTIN BRIMMER, Vice-President 

FRANCIS PARKMAN. 

H. W. HAYNES. 

W. R. WARE. 

W. W. GOODWIN. 

ALEXANDER AGASSIZ. 

O. W. PEABODY, Treasurer. 

E. H. GREENLEAF, Secretary. 

Executive Committee. 



« 



A STUDY 

OF THE 

HOUSES OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES ; 

WITH SUGGESTIONS FOR THE EXPLORATION OF THE 

RUINS IN NEW MEXICO, ARIZONA, THE VALLEY OF THE 
SAN JUAN, AND IN YUCATAN AND 
CENTRAL AMERICA, 

UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



By LEWIS H. MORGAN. 



A STUDY 

OF THE 

HOUSES OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 



/^NE great object of the Archaeological Institute, so far 
as it relates to America, should be to explore, delin- 
eate, and describe the house architecture of the Indian 
tribes as represented by the houses now to be found in 
ruins, or in actual occupation, in the region of the San 
Juan River, in New Mexico and Arizona, in Mexico and 
Central America, and to study such fictile wares, imple- 
ments, and utensils as may be found therein, and may tend 
to illustrate the condition of the people. The whole of 
this area should be covered by the plan of operations of the 
Institute, for it contains but one system of works, similar in 
broad features, but with minor, mutually illustrative varie- 
ties in different localities. To the Archaeological Institute 
pre-eminently belongs the important and meritorious enter- 
prise of gathering up a knowledge of these remains, and of 
presenting to the world a comparison and interpretation of 
them. There is yet time to do this work well : it cannot 
be done by any single individual ; and unless the present 
organization succeed in its accomplishment, there is little 
hope that it will ever be done. 

The great houses of stone of the Village Indians within 
the areas named, and particularly in Yucatan and Central 
America, are the highest constructive works of the Indian 
tribes. It seems to me probable that, from the beginning, 
a wrong interpretation has been put upon this architecture, 



30 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



from a failure to understand its object and uses, and the 
condition and mode of domestic life of the people who 
occupied these structures. The design and object for 
which these edifices were constructed still await an intelli- 
gent explanation. 

There are reasons for assuming that all the tribes of the 
American aborigines were of one common stock; that 
their institutions, plan of life, usages and customs were 
similar ; and that the houses in ruins in the various places 
named can be explained, by comparison with those now 
inhabited in New Mexico, as parts of a common system of 
house architecture. If this be so, it follows that the facts 
of American archaeology must be studied ethnologically ; 
i. e. y from the institutions, usages, and mode of life of ex- 
isting Indian tribes. It is by losing sight of this principle 
that American archaeology is in such a low condition, or 
rather that we scarcely have such a science among us. 

I will endeavor to illustrate this proposition with some 
degree of fulness, because of its important bearing upon 
the question of future explorations by the Institute. 

I. It is made plain, by a bare inspection of the ground 
plans of Indian houses that a common principle — that of 
adaptation to communism in living — runs through all the 
house architecture of our Indian tribes, and that this princi- 
ple determined the form and character of the house itself. 
It is seen in the Long Houses of the Iroquois prior to A. D. 
1750, designed for five, ten, and twenty families; in the 
lodges of the Minnitares and Mandans, designed for six 
and eight families ; in the spacious houses of the Columbia 
River Indians, visited by Lewis and Clarke in 1805, large 
enough for several families, and in some cases containing 
two hundred or more persons ; and in the clustered cabins 
of the Creeks and Cherokees, designed for several families. 
This communism appears to have been restricted to the 
household. 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 3* 



Mr. Greenhalgh, who visited the several villages of the 
Iroquois in 1677, thus describes Tiotohattan, the largest of 
the Seneca villages, situated near Mendon, in the county of 
Monroe, New York: "It contains about one hundred and 
twenty houses, being the largest of all the houses we saw, 
the ordinary being fifty to sixty feet long, with twelve and 
thirteen fires in one house. They have a good store of 
corn growing about a mile to the northward of the town." 1 
We know the form and mode of construction of these 
houses from Seneca Indians who had lived in them in their 
childhood. 

— 1 — 1 — 1 — 11 — 1 — 1 — 

__JI H il HUB 

Fig. i. GROUND PLAN OF SENECA-IROQUOIS LONG HOUSE. 

The interior of the house was divided into compartments 
at intervals of six or eight feet, leaving each chamber en- 
tirely open, like a stall, upon the passage-way or hall, 
which ran through the centre of the house, from end to 
end. Between each four apartments, two on a side, was a 
fire-pit in the centre of the hall, used in common by their 
occupants. Thus a house with six fires would contain 
twenty-four apartments, and would accommodate as many 
families, unless some of the apartments were reserved for 
storage-rooms. Raised bunks were constructed around the 
three sides of each stall for beds, and the floor was slightly 
raised above the level of the ground. From the roof-poles 
were suspended strings of maize in the ear, braided together 
by the husk ; also, strings of dried squash and dried meat. 
Each house, as a rule, was occupied by related families, 
the mothers being sisters, own and collateral, who with 
their children belonged to the same gens or clan, while 
their husbands, the fathers of these children, belonged to 

1 Documentary History of New York, 1, 13. 



32 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



other gentes ; consequently, 
the gens or clan of the mother 
predominated in numbers in 
the household, descent being 
in the female line. What- 
ever was taken in the hunt, 
or raised by cultivation by 
any member of the house- 
hold, was for the common 
benefit. Provisions were held 
as common stock within the 
household. The Iroquois had 
but one cooked meal each 
day, — a dinner. Eachhouse- 
hold, in the matter of the 
management of their food, 
was under the care - of a 
matron. When the daily 
meal had been cooked at 
the several fires, the matron 
was summoned. It was her 
duty to divide the food from 
i fji the kettle to the several fam- 

"' ^ ilies within the house, accord- 

ing to their needs. What 
remained was put aside to 
await the further direction of 
the matron. 

Here, then, was commun- 
ism in living, carried out in 
practical life and with a 
method, but limited to the 
household, and with an ex- 
pression of the principle in 
Fig. 2. elevation of same. the plan of the house itself. 
Having found it in one stock as well developed as the 




HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 



Iroquois, we may expect to find it generally among those 
Indian tribes which were in the same stage of advance- 
ment, and to trace it in a modified form among the more 
advanced sedentary Village Indians of New Mexico, 
Mexico, and Central America. It is seen to be a law of 
their condition, and the most economical mode of life 
open to them. 

The Long House was from fifty to eighty, and sometimes 
a hundred feet long. It was constructed with a strong 
frame of upright poles set in the ground, strengthened by 
horizontal poles attached with withes, and surmounted by 
a triangular or sometimes a round-top roof. The sides, 
ends, and roof were covered with large strips of elm-bark 
which were tied to the frame with strings, or fastened 
with splints. An external frame of poles was then set up, 
so as to hold the bark shingles between it and the inner 
frame, the two frames being tied together with withes or 
strings. A suspended skin at either end answered for a 
door. 

The Iroquois Long House disappeared before the com- 
mencement of the present century, and with it the practice 
among the Iroquois of communism in living. They have 
adopted the customs of our people, and live in separate 
houses or cabins, each family by itself. Very little is now 
remembered by these Indians themselves of their ancient 
plan of life in the communal houses, and few, if any, now 
survive who lived in them in childhood. Mrs. William 
Parker, a Seneca woman, of Tonawanda, informed me, 
thirty years ago, that when she was a child she lived in one 
of these houses, and that her mother and grandmother 
before her had acted as matrons in one of these Long 
Houses. At the same time her husband constructed for 
the writer a model of one of these houses, showing the 
manner of their construction. The more intelligent Seneca 
Indians were then familiar with the plan. 

In 1696 the Onondagas burned their village at Onondaga, 

3 



ARCHJEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



v 

ft 

V 



►a 



4 



at the time of the French 
invasion under Frontenac. 
A new village was afterward 
built near or upon the old 
site. In 1743 Bartram, 
in company with Conrad 
Weiser, visited the Onon- 
dagas to attend a council, 
and afterwards published 
his Journal. This con- 
tained a ground plan of 
the Long House in which 
they were lodged and en- 
tertained by the Onondaga 
chiefs. The plan here given 
is an exact copy of that in 
his book. It was the largest 
of all the houses in the vil- 
lage, and used as the " Offi- 
cial House " of the tribe, 
though called the " Council 
House " by Mr. Bartram. 
"We alighted," he remarks, 
" at the Council House, 
where the chiefs were al- 
ready assembled to receive 
us, which they did with a 
grave, cheerful complai- 
sance, according to their 
custom. They showed us 
where to lay our luggage 
and repose ourselves during 
our stay with them, which 
was in the two end-apart- 
ments of this large house. 
The Indians that came with 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 35 



us were placed over against us. 
This cabin is about eighty feet 
long and seventeen broad, the 
common passage six feet wide, 
and the apartments on each side 
five feet, raised a foot above the 
passage by a long sapling, hewed 
square, and fitted with joists that 
go from it to the back of the 
house. On these joists they lay 
large pieces of bark, and on 
extraordinary occasions spread 
mats made of rushes, which favor 




Fig 3 2 - CROSS SECTION. 



we had. On these floors they sit or lie down, every one 
as he will. The apartments are divided from each other by 
boards or bark, six or seven feet long from the lower floor 
to the upper, on which they put their lumber. . . . All the 
sides and roof of the cabin are made of bark, bound first to 
poles set in the ground, and bent round on the top, or set 
aflat for the roof as we set our rafters. Over each fireplace 
they leave a hole to let out the smoke, which in rainy 
weather they cover with a piece of bark ; and this they can 
easily reach with a pole to perch it on one side or quite 
cover the hole. After this manner are most of their houses 
built." 1 The end section shows a round roof, as in the 
houses of the Virginia Indians, and the ground plan agrees, 
in all essential respects, with the old Long Houses of the 
Senecas as described by them to the writer. 

Among the Minnitares of the upper Missouri a style of 
timber-framed house was found, covered with earth, supe- 
rior in construction to that of the Iroquois, but agreeing 
with it in its communal character. It was not confined to 
the Minnitares, but was constructed by the Mandans also ; 
and, at a later day, by the Arickarees, Iowas, and Omahas. 

1 Bartram's Observations, etc. Travel to Onondaga. 2d ed 17 51, 
pp. 40, 41. 



36 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



The Minnitares and Mandans now live together at one 
village at Fort Berthold, in houses of this kind, and the 
Arickarees near them, in houses of the same description, 
constructed as late as 1861. This is the most elaborate 
house constructed by any of the northern tribes. There is 
some reason, growing out of their peculiar religious system, 
for the conjecture that the Minnitares are descendants of 
the Mound Builders, from whom they derived the practice 
of cord-swinging and of dragging the buffalo-skull, and 
other acts of self-torture, fully described in his book, enti- 
tled " O-kee-pa," by George Catlin, who witnessed, among 
the Mandans, in 1832, these extraordinary rites, which 
they had adopted from the Minnitares. 1 




Fig. 4. MANDAN VILLAGE PLOT. 

In 1862 I saw the remains of the old Mandan village, 
shortly after its abandonment by the Arickarees, its last 
occupants. The houses, nearly all of which were of the 
same model, were falling into decay, but some of them 
were still perfect, and the plan of their structure could be 
easily made out. 

1 O-kee-pa. A Religious Ceremony and Other Customs of the Mandans, 
1867. 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 37 

The preceding cut of the village is taken from the work 
of Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied, and the remaining 
illustrations are from sketches and measurements of the 
writer. It was situated upon a bluff on the west side of 
the Missouri, and at a bend in the river which formed an 
obtuse angle and covered about six acres of land. The 
village was surrounded with a stockade, made of timbers 
set vertically in the ground, and about ten feet high, but 
then in a dilapidated condition. 

The houses were circular in external form, the walls 
being about five feet high, sloping inward from the ground. 
An inclined roof rested upon the walls. Both the roof and 
the exterior walls were covered with " a concrete of tough 
clay and gravel," a foot and a half thick. For this reason 
the houses have usually been called " Dirt Lodges." 




Fig. 5. GROUND PLAN OF MANDAN HOUSE. 



The houses were about forty fee.t in diameter, with the 
floor sunk a foot below the surface of the ground. They 
were six feet high on the inside at the line of the wall, and 
from twelve to fifteen feet high at the centre. Twelve 



33 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



posts, about six inches in diameter, were set in the ground, 
at equal distances on the circumference of a circle, and 
rose about six feet above the level of the floor; string 
pieces, resting in forks cut in the end of these posts, formed 
a polygon at the top, and also upon the ground floor. 
Against these posts an equal number of braces were sunk 
in the ground, about four feet distant, which, slanting up- 
ward, were braced against the stringers. Slabs of wood 
were then set in the spaces between the braces, at the same 
inclination, and resting against the stringers, so as, when 
complete, to surround the lodge with a wooden wall. 
Four round posts were set in the ground near the centre of 
the floor in the angles of a square. These were ten feet 
apart, and rose from ten to fifteen feet above the ground 
floor. They were connected by stringers resting in forks 
at their tops, upon which, and the external wall, the rafters 
rest. 




Fig. 6. CROSS SECTION OF HOUSE. 



Poles three or four inches in diameter were laid as rafters 
from the external wall to the string pieces resting on the 
central posts, and near enough together to give the neces- 
sary strength to bear the earth-covering placed upon the 
roof. These poles were first covered over with willow 
matting, upon which prairie grass was spread, and over all 
a deep covering of earth, clay, and gravel. An opening 
was left in the centre, about four feet in diameter, for the 
exit of the smoke and also for the admission of light. The 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 39 



interior was spacious and well-lighted for an Indian house, 
although the opening in the roof and a single doorway- 
were the only apertures through which light could enter. 
The entrance was in the nature of an Eskimo's doorway. 
It was a passage some five feet wide, twelve feet long, 
and six feet high, constructed with split timbers, roofed with 
poles and covered with earth. Buffalo robes suspended at 
the outer and inner ends supplied the placeof doors. 

Each house was divided into compartments by screens 
of willow matting or unhaired skins suspended from the 
rafters, with spaces between for stowage. These slightly- 
constructed apartments opened towards the fire in the 
centre, like stalls, thus defining an open central space 
around the fire-pit, which was the gathering place of the 
inmates of the lodge. The interior was finished with a 



hard, smooth, earthen floor. Such a lodge would accom- 
modate five or six families, numbering in all thirty or forty- 
persons. It was a communal house, in accordance with 
the usages and customs of the Indian tribes, and growing 
naturally out of their institutions and mode of life. The 
Mandans were organized in gentes, with descent in the 
female line ; and doubtless each house was filled with per- 




Fig. 7. MANDAN HOUSE. 



AO 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



sons of the same gens or clan. I 
counted forty-eight houses which 
would average forty feet in di- 
ameter, all constructed on this 
model, besides several rectangu- 
lar houses of hewn logs, evident- 
ly of later erection. 

These houses, of which a rep- 
resentation is given in Figure 
7, were set thickly together 
to economize the space within 
the stockade, so that in walking 
through the village you passed 
along semi - circular footpaths. There was no street, 
and it was impossible to see in any direction except for 
short distances. In the centre was an open space, where 
religious rites, dances, and festivals were celebrated in the 
presence of spectators who occupied the tops of the lodges 
nearest the centre. In the spaces between the lodges were 
drying scaffolds, one for each lodge, which were nearly as 
conspicuous in the distance as the houses. They were 
about twenty feet long, ten feet wide, and seven feet high 
to the flooring. The end and middle parts were sur- 
mounted by cross pieces rasied about six feet higher. 
These scaffolds, which were reached by ladders, were used 
for drying meat, skins, and vegetables. Situated pictu- 
resquely upon a bluff, the houses, from their peculiar 
model, and the array of scaffolds rising up among them, 
presented a striking appearance to those who approached 
by the river. 

Afterwards, at the present Minnitare and Mandan village, 
about sixty-five miles above on the east side of the river, 
and also at the new Arickaree village on the west side, I 
had an opportunity to see, in actual occupation, houses 
precisely similar in their interior arrangements to those 
described, as well as the large cultivated garden by the 




Fig 7 2 - MANDAN SCAFFOLD. 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 41 



side of the village, and to observe the mode of life of the 
Indians. 

Although in form and construction unlike the Long 
House of the Iroquois, we yet find here a communal joint 
tenement-house, designed to be occupied by a large house- 
hold, composed of related families. It was the same in 
principle as the Iroquois Long House. 

When Lewis and Clarke visited the Columbia River 
Indian tribes in 1805-06, they found them living in houses 
of the plainest communal type, some of them approaching 
in dimensions and in the number of their occupants the 
Pueblo houses in New Mexico. They speak of a house of 
the Chopunish (Nez Perces) as follows: " The village of 
Tumachemootool is in fact only a single house, one hundred 
and fifty feet long, built after the Chopunish fashion, with 
sticks, straw, and dried grass. It contains twenty- four 
fires, about double that number of families, and might 
perhaps muster a hundred fighting men." 1 This would 
give five hundred people in a single house. The number 
of fires probably indicated the number of groups practising 
communism among themselves as household groups ; 
though, for aught we know, it may have been general in 
the entire household. 

Another great house (Fig. 8) is thus described: " This 
large house is two hundred and twenty-six feet in front, 
entirely above ground, and may be considered a single 
house, because the whole is under one roof ; otherwise it 
would seem more like a range of buildings, as it is divided 
into seven distinct apartments, each thirty feet square, by 
means of broad boards set up on end from the floor to the 
roof. The apartments are separated from each other by 
a passage or alley, four feet wide, extending through the 
whole depth of the house, and the only entrance is from 
the alley through a small hole, about twenty inches wide 
and not more than three feet high. The roof is formed of 

1 Travels to the Sources of the Missouri River, etc. London ed. 1814, p. 548. 



4 2 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



rafters and round poles laid on horizontally. The whole 
is covered with a double roof of bark of white cedar." 1 
The apartments may be supposed to indicate the num- 
ber of households into which the people were divided for 
the practice of communism. The houses of all the 
tribes visited by Lewis and Clarke were of the same 
general character, and designed to accommodate several 
families. 

With respect to communism in living among these tribes, 
they make the following statement: " Their houses usually 
contain several families, consisting of the parents, their 
sons and daughters-in law, and grandchildren, among whom 
the provision is common, and whose harmony is scarcely 
ever interrupted by disputes. Although polygamy is per- 
mitted by their customs, very few have more than a single 
wife, and she is brought immediately after the marriage 
into the husband's family, where she resides until increasing 
numbers oblige them to seek another house. In this state, 
the old man is not considered the head of the family, since 
the active duties, as well as the responsibility, fall on some 
of the younger members." 2 

It is evident, from several statements of Catlin, that the 
Mandans practised communism in the household ; and it 
is also probable that the household was formed of gentile 
kindred, as among the Iroquois. He also states that they 
kept a public store or granary to afford supplies to the 
whole community in time of scarcity. 3 

Mr. Caleb Swan, who visited the Creek Indians of 
Georgia in 1790, found the people living in small houses 
or cabins, built in clusters, each cluster being occupied by 
a part of a gens or clan. He remarks that " the smallest 
of their towns have from ten to forty houses, and some of 
the largest from fifty to two hundred, that are tolerably 
compact. These houses stand in clusters of four, five, six, 

1 Lewis and Clarke's Travels, etc., p. 503. 2 lb., p. 443. 

3 Catlin's American Indians I., 139. 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 43 



seven, and eight together. Each cluster of houses contains 
a clan or family of relations who eat and live in common." 1 
Thus it appears that the tribes of the United States were 
originally found living very generally, not in single families, 
but in large households, composed of several families, and 
practising communism in living in the household. This 
practice revealed itself in the structure of their houses. A 
little reflection must convince any one of the economic 
advantages of this practice to people in their condition. 

II. The same principle is to be traced through the joint 
tenement-houses of the Sedentary Village Indians of New 
Mexico, Arizona, Mexico, and Central America; namely, 
that of adaptation to communism in living in household 
groups, with a superadded defensive principle in the mode 
of construction. In New Mexico the Indians erected their 
houses of adobe brick, of cobble-stone and adobe mortar, 
and later of sandstone and the same mortar. The stones 
used were small in size, and presented faces of natural 
fracture. They were built two, three, four, and sometimes 
five and six stories high, with walls from two to three feet 
thick, in the terraced form, the upper stories receding from 
those below. These houses were closed up solid in the 
first or ground story, and were entered by means of lad- 
ders ascending to the first terrace or roof, and so to those 
above ; the rooms being entered through trap-doors in the 
floors, and the descent being effected by ladders. This 
method of construction turned each house into a fortress. 

The Village Indians were one ethnical perio.d in advance 
of the northern tribes, namely, in the middle status of bar- 
barism. Beside constructing houses of adobe brick and 
of stone, they cultivated garden beds by irrigation, and 
wore mantles of cotton, as well as skin garments, — as Cor- 
onado, who captured the principal Pueblos in New Mexico, 

1 Schoolcraft's History, Condition and Prospects of Indian Tribes, 
p. 262. 



44 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 

in 1540-42, states in his Relation. 1 But in the art of war 
the Village Indians had made but little advance beyond 
the tribes in the lower status. It is a question whether 
they were not inferior in hardihood and in courage ; but 
they had learned to construct their houses in such a man- 
ner as to resist assault. The defensive principle incorpo- 
rated in their house-architecture represented the real 
progress in their condition. At the same time, the fact 
that every house had to be constructed like a fortress in- 
dicates the insecurity in which they lived. 

There is something striking and remarkable in the plan 
of these houses. They contained from fifty to five hundred 
apartments, and would accommodate from two hundred 
to five hundred, and in some cases more than a thousand 
persons. They were joint-tenement houses of the Amer- 
ican model. They belong to a state of society that pre- 
cedes advanced civilization by an immense period of time, 
— a condition that has never been satisfactorily studied or 
explained, and which it is now difficult to comprehend. 
Theoretically, the Pueblo house about to be described is 
the same in principle as the Long House of the Iroquois 
and the Dirt Lodge of the Mandans, but on a larger scale 
and in a more durable form. It presupposes a state of 
the family without the exclusiveness of monogamy, in 
which communism in living might be expected to exist as 
a necessary principle of economy, and to express itself in 
the form of the house. The house is adapted to com- 
munism in living among large groups of related persons. 

It is doubtful whether it is now possible to ascertain 
the usages and customs of the Indians of three hundred 
and fifty years ago, when this mode of life was in full 
vitality in New Mexico, Mexico, and Central America, as 

1 " They have no cotton wool growing, because the country is cold, yet 
they wear mantles thereof, as your Honor may see by the show thereof [speci- 
mens must have been sent with the Relation] ; and true it is that there was 
found in their houses cotton yarn made of cotton wool." — Haklnyfs Collec- 
tion of Voyages. London ed., 1608. III. 377. 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 45 



a natural outgrowth of Indian institutions. No attempt 
has been made to investigate the subject. The people have 
been environed with civilization during the latter portion 
of this period, and have been more or less affected by it. 
Their further growth and development was arrested by the 
advent of European civilization, which blighted their more 
feeble culture. Since their discovery they have steadily 
declined in numbers, and they show no signs of recovery 
from the shock produced by their subjugation. 

Among the northern tribes — who were, as has been 
stated, one ethnical period below the Pueblo Indians — 
social organization and mode of life have changed mate- 
rially, under similar influences, since the period of dis- 
covery. The family has fallen more into the strictly 
monogamic form. Each family now occupies a separate 
house. Communism in living in large households has 
disappeared. The organization into gentes has in many 
cases been given up, or has been rudely extinguished by 
external influences ; and the religious usages of the tribes 
have also greatly changed. We must expect to find sim- 
ilar and even greater changes among the Village Indians 
of the south. The white race came upon them in Mexico 
and New Mexico a hundred years earlier than upon the 
Indian tribes of the United States. But, as if to stimulate 
investigation into their ancient mode of life, some of these 
tribes have continued through all these years to live in the 
identical houses occupied by their forefathers in 1540, — 
as at Zuni, Acoma, Jemes, and Taos. These Pueblos were 
contemporary with the Pueblo of Mexico captured by 
Cortez in 1520. The present inhabitants are likely to 
have retained some part of the old plan of life, or some 
traditionary knowledge of what it was. They probably 
retain some of the old usages and customs with respect 
to the ownership and inheritance of sections of their 
joint-tenement houses, and to the limitations upon the 
power of sale, so that they should not pass out of the 



4 6 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



kinship, as well as with respect to sections of the village 
garden. 1 All the facts relating to their ancient usages and 
mode of life should be ascertained, so far as it is now pos- 
sible to do so, from the present inhabitants of these Pueblos. 
The information thus gained will serve a useful purpose in 
explaining the Pueblos in ruins in Yucatan and Central 
America, as well as on the San Juan, the Chaco, and the 
Gila. From Zuni to Cuzco, at the time of the Spanish 
conquest, the mode of domestic life in all these joint 
tenement-houses must have been substantially the same. 

The Village Indians of New Mexico, alone among the 
Indian tribes of America, are now, as I have said, in pos- 
session of the houses occupied by their ancestors in 1540. 
What has survived of the ancient manner of life is now 
exhibited by them alone. 

Several large Pueblos of stone, now in ruins, may still 
be seen in the canon of the Rio Chaco, an affluent of the 
San Juan. They were first described with ground plans 
by Lieutenant J. H. Simpson in 1849, and again by W, 
H. Jackson in 1876. The representation given here (Fig. 
9) is from Lieutenant Simpson's Report. There are rea- 
sons for the belief that these Pueblos are the ruins of the 
" Seven Cities of Cibola," 2 against which the expedition 
of Coronado was directed in 1540. They are the most re- 
markable ruins in New Mexico, because of their size and 
of the materials used in their construction. With certain 
stone Pueblos in ruins on the Animas River, and in the 
Montezuma valley, so called, they seem to have been the 
finest structures north of Yucatan, and the largest ever 
erected by the Indians in North America. There is no 
reason for supposing that the Pueblo of Mexico contained 

1 I saw at Taos in New Mexico in 1878, a dozen large ovens each of 
which was equal to the wants of several families. These were adopted from 
the Spanish conquerors, and yet not unlikely have some connection with the 
old principle of communism. 

2 North American Review for July, 1869, — "The Seven Cities of 
Cibola." 




Fig. 9. 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. A7 



any structures superior to them in character. The edifices 
in Yucatan and Central America, however, are very much 
superior. The Pueblo of Hungo Pavie is one of the 
smallest of the series, the main building being three hun- 
dred feet long, according to Lieutenant Simpson, and the 
wings each one hundred and forty-four feet in length ; and 
yet it is larger than the largest structure in Yucatan or 
Central America yet discovered. Hungo Pavie was three 
stories high, built in the terraced form, and the walls were 
of stone. There were seventy-two apartments in the first 
story, some of which are thirteen by eighteen feet in di- 
mensions; forty-eight apartments in the second story, 
and twenty-four in the third, — making in the aggregate one 
hundred and forty-six apartments. The Pueblo would ac- 
commodate from five hundred to eight hundred people, 
living in the fashion of Indians in the middle status of 
barbarism. The walls are about three feet thick in the 
first story, diminishing slightly in thickness in each suc- 
ceeding story. They were built of tabular pieces of un- 
hewn sandstone, laid with adobe mortar. The stones, 
were neither dressed nor reduced to a surface uniformly 
level, but being small, — from three to six inches in thick- 
ness, and from six to eighteen in length, — they formed a 
fair wall. They were laid with some regard to evenness but 
the Indian mason did not hesitate to break the courses ; 
and the several courses were not uniform, but generally of 
different thicknesses. 

Figure 10 is also a copy of the plate in Lieutenant 
Simpson's Report. It is doubtless a tolerably accurate 
representation of this structure as it stood in 1540. We 
may recognize in this edifice a substantial reproduction 
of the miscalled " palace " of Montezuma in the Pueblo of 
Mexico, which, like this, was constructed upon the three 
sides of a court, in the terraced form, and two stories high. 
In the light which these New-Mexican houses throw 
upon those of the Mexicans, the house occupied by 



48 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



Montezuma is seen to have been a joint-tenement house 
of the American model, as represented in the figure. 
It is, therefore, unnecessary to call any of these structures 
palaces in order to account for their size, or to assume 
a condition of society in which the palace of the ruler was 
built by the forced labor of his subjects. 

Figure 1 1 is a copy from a plate in W. H. Jackson's 
report. It is more fully worked out than that given by 
Lieutenant Simpson, and has been selected because it is 
accompanied by a restoration of the structures by Mr. 
Jackson. " The length of Pueblo Bonito is five hundred 
and forty-four feet, and its width three hundred and 
fourteen feet. By referring to the plan, it will be seen that 
it only roughly approximates the usual rectangular shape. 
The two side wings are parallel with each other, and at right 
angles to the front wall, for a distance of seventy feet ; the 
west wing then bends around until a little past a line drawn 
through the centre of the ruin transversely, when it bears 
off diagonally to join the east wing, — thus resembling in 
outline a semi-oval. Instead of a semi-circular wall, the 
court is enclosed by a perfectly straight row of small build- 
ings, running almost due east and west, and is intersected by 
a line of estufas, which divide it (the court) into two nearly 
equal portions. A marked feature is the difference in the 
manner of construction, as shown in the character of the 
masonry and of the ground plan. It was not built with the 
unity of purpose so evident in the Pueblo of Chettro Kettle 
and some others, but large additions have been spliced in 
from time to time, producing a complexity in the arrange- 
ment of the rooms difficult to follow out." 1 This is the 
largest single Pueblo structure ever erected in North 
America, in the extent of its accommodations. Lieutenant 
Simpson estimated the number of rooms at six hundred 
and forty-one. 2 

1 Jackson's Report in Hayden's Geological and Geographical Survey of 
the Territories, 1876, p. 440. 

2 Simpson's Report, p. 84. 




Fig. ii. 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 



49 



Lieutenant Simpson found one room entire in the ruins 
of this Pueblo, and from his plate Fig. 12 is taken. It 
shows a doorway in one wall, and there was, doubtless, 
another through the opposite wall not shown. There are 
two niches sunk in the side walls. Cedar beams about a 
foot in diameter are laid from wall to wall. Small poles 
are laid transversely, close together upon these beams. 
Upon the transverse poles are laid slips of cedar or cedar- 
bark, which are covered with a coat of adobe mortar, three 
or four inches thick. The adobe which completes the 
ceiling of the room below becomes the floor of the room 
above. The rooms in the houses now inhabited in New 
Mexico have their ceilings and floors made in precisely the 
same manner. 

Mr. Jackson's study of this ruin enabled him to produce 
a restoration of it, of which a plate is given in his report, 
and is here reproduced (Fig. 13). It is an interesting 
work, considered as a restoration which can only claim 
to be approximately correct. It will be noticed that three 
passageways are left open into the court, although the 
ground plan shows but one. In the Yucatan edifices, as 
the House of the Nuns at Uxmal, there is usually a tri- 
angular-arched gateway through the centre of the building, 
facing the court. The court is also open at each of the 
four angles, but three openings may have been protected 
by palisades in time of danger. 

As to the manner of constructing these edifices, it is 
probable that they were not finished at once, but that they 
were added to, from time to time, and from generation to 
generation, as the inmates increased in numbers and the 
Pueblo in prosperity. Like a feudal castle, each house was 
a growth by additions made as exigencies required. And 
when one of these houses, after attaining a sufficient size, 
became overcrowded with inhabitants, it seems likely that 
a strong colony, like the swarm from the parent hive, 
moved out and began a new house, above or below, on the 

4 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



same stream. This process might be repeated, from gen- 
eration to generation, as the people prospered, until seven 
or eight Pueblos might grow up within an extent of ten or 
fifteen miles, — as in the valley of the Chaco and in the 
valley of the Scioto. When the capabilities of the district 
were becoming overtaxed for their subsistence, the colo- 
nists would seek more distant homes. At the period of 
the highest prosperity of these Pueblos, which was prior 
to 1540, the canon, or rather valley, of the Chaco must 
have offered remarkable advantages for subsistence. The 
space between the walls of the canon is less than half a mile 
in width, and the amount of water passing through it is 
small. In July, according to Lieutenant Simpson, the 
running stream is in places eight feet wide and a foot and a 
half deep ; while in May, Mr. Jackson found no running 
water, and the valley entirely dry with the exception of 
occasional pools of water. The condition of the region 
is shown by the contrast of these two months. During 
the rainy season, which is also the season of the growing 
crops, there is an abundance of water, while in the dry 
season it is confined to springs and pools. 

Figure 14 represents one of two large adobe structures, 
constituting the Pueblo of Taos, in New Mexico. It is 
situated upon Taos Creek, at the western base of the Sierra 
Madre Range, which borders on the east side of the broad 
valley of the Rio Grande, into which the Taos stream runs. 
It is an old and irregular building, and is supposed to be 
the Braba of Coronado's expedition. 1 Some ruins yet re- 
main, not far off, of a still older Pueblo, whose inhabitants, 
the Taos Indians as they affirm, conquered and dispos- 
sessed. The two structures stand about twenty-five rods 
apart, on opposite sides of the stream, and facing each 
other. That upon the north side is about two hundred 
and fifty feet long, one hundred and thirty feet deep, and 
six stories high ; and that upon the south side is of nearly 

1 Transactions of the Ethnological Society, ii. Introd. p. lxxxi. 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 5 1 



the same dimensions, and five stories high. The present 
population of the Pueblo, about four hundred individuals, 
are divided between the two houses, and they are a thrifty, 
industrious, and intelligent people. Upon the east side is 
a long adobe wall protecting the open space between the 
two buildings. A corresponding wall may have closed 
the space on the west, thus forming a large court between 
the buildings; but, if so, it has now disappeared. The 
creek is bordered on both sides with fields or gardens, 
which are irrigated by canals draining water from the 
stream. The adobe is of a yellowish brown color, and the 
two structures make a striking appearance as they are ap- 
proached. Fireplaces and chimneys have been added to 
the principal room of each family; but it is evident that 
they are modern, and that the suggestion came from Span- 
ish sources. They are constructed in the corner of the 
room. The first story is built up solid, and those above 
recede in the terraced form. Ladders planted against the 
walls show the manner in which the several stories are 
reached, and, with a few exceptions, the rooms are entered 
through trapdoors by means of ladders. Children, and 
even dogs, run up and down these ladders with great free- 
dom. The lower rooms are used for storage and granaries, 
and the upper for living rooms, — the families in the rooms 
above owning and controlling the rooms below those which 
they occupy. The Pueblo has its chiefs and officers of 
different grades, and presents the appearance of a well- 
ordered community. 

The illustration opposite is taken from a plate in Lieu- 
tenant Ives's Report. 1 Two rooms in one of the Moqui 
Pueblos are shown together. Water jars of native manu- 
facture are standing on the floor, and corn braided by the 
husks is hanging on the walls. Lieutenant Ives says: 
" The room was fifteen feet by ten ; the walls were made 
of adobes, the partitions of substantial beams ; the floor 

1 Report upon the Colorado River of the West, p. 121. 



V- 



ARCHjEOLOGICAL institute. 



laid with clay. In one corner were a fireplace and chim- 
ney. Everything was clean and tidy. Skins, bows and 
arrows, quivers, antlers, blankets, articles of clothing and 
ornament were hanging from the walls or arranged upon 
shelves. Vases, flat dishes, and gourds filled with meal 
or water, were standing along one side of the room. At 
the other end was a trough, divided into compartments, in 
each of which was a sloping stone slab, two or three feet 
square, for grinding corn upon. In a recess of an inner 
room was piled a goodly store of corn in the ear. . . . 
Another inner room appeared to be a sleeping apartment, 
but this, being occupied by females, we did not enter." 
The ceiling, it will be noticed, is formed in the same man- 
ner as in the Pueblo Bonito ruins. {Supra, Fig. 12.) 

The Pueblo of Taos alone is sufficient to explain the 
manner in which the Pueblos in ruins, in the valley of the 
Chaco and elsewhere in and near Xew Mexico, were oc- 
cupied three centuries and more ago. They are parts of 
the same system of works architecturally, and were occu- 
pied by tribes of Village Indians, from whom the present 
Village Indians are descended. All alike, they are joint- 
tenement houses, in the nature of fortresses, and the plan 
of life within them must be sought in the present Pueblos, 
assisted by the light of tradition. 

III. This o-eneral view of the houses and house-life of 
the American aborigines is strengthened by extending the 
comparison to the earth-works of the Mound Builders, 
which are wholly inexplicable apart from the explanation 
the joint-tenement house is capable of affording. The 
Mound Builders were in advance of the northern tribes in 
culture, and were of the grade of the Village Indians in 
Xew Mexico, from which region they were, in all prob- 
ability, derived. Without stopping to discuss the distribu- 
tion of these earth-works, or to describe them specially, it 
must be concluded that they were the sites of villages. 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 53 



The question then recurs, For what purpose did the Mound 
Builders raise these embankments at an expenditure of so 
much labor? No answer has been given to this ques- 
tion, and no serious attempt has been made to explain 
their uses. These embankments were constructed for 
some practical purpose, and that purpose must be sought 
in the needs and mode of life of the Mound Builders as 
Village Indians ; and it should be expressed in the works 
themselves. 

If, then, a tribe of Village Indians, with the habits and ex- 
perience this condition implies, emigrated centuries ago in 
search of new homes, and if in the course of time they or 
their descendants reached the Scioto valley in Ohio, they 
would have found it impossible to construct houses of 
adobe brick able to resist the rains and frosts of the climate. 
Some modification of their house architecture would be 
forced upon them through climatic reasons. They might 
have used stone, if possessed of sufficient skill to quarry it 
and construct walls of it Or, they might have fallen 
back upon a system of construction of inferior grade, with 
houses set upon the level ground, such as those of the 
Minnitares and Mandans. Or, they might have raised 
these embankments of earth, enclosing circular, rectangular, 
or sqitare areas, and constructed their Long Houses upon them. 
It is submitted conjecturally that this is precisely what 
they did. Such houses would agree, in general character 
and plan, and in the uses to which they were adapted, 
with those of the Indian tribes found in all parts of 
America. 

In the valley of the Scioto in Ohio, and within an extent 
of twelve miles, were found the remains of seven villages of 
the Mound Builders, four upon the east and three upon the 
west side of the river. They are among the best of their 
works, and furnish fair examples of the whole. The situa- 
tion of these Pueblos, at short distances from each other 
on the same stream, accords with the usages of the Village 



54 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



Indians of New Mexico, Mexico, and Central America, in 
locating their villages. 

One of the number, the High-Bank Pueblo, is shown in 
the figure (Fig. 16), with a restoration. 

The plan is taken from the work of Squier and Davis. 1 
These authors remark that " the principal work consists 
of an octagon and circle ; the former measuring nine 
hundred and fifty feet, the latter ten hundred and fifty 
feet in diameter. . . . The walls of the octagon are 
very bold, and, where they have been least subject 
to cultivation, are now between eleven and twelve feet in 
height by about fifty feet base. The wall of the circle 
is much less, nowhere measuring over four or five feet in 
altitude. In all these respects, as in the absence of a ditch, 
and the presence of the two small circles, this work resem- 
bles the Hopeton Works." Of the latter, which are nine 
miles above on the Scioto, they remark " that the walls 
of the rectangular work are composed of a clayey loam, 
twelve feet high by fifty feet base. . . . They resemble the 
heavy grading of a railway, and are broad enough on the 
top to admit the passage of a coach." 2 

If the embankments of the High-Bank Pueblo were re- 
formed, with the materials washed down and now spread 
over a base of fifty feet, with sloping sides and a level 
summit, they would form new embankments, thirty-seven 
feet wide at base, ten feet high, and with a summit platform 
twenty-two feet wide. If a surface coating of clay were 
used, the sides could be made steeper, and the summit 
platform broader. Such embankments would provide an 
ample site for long, joint-tenement houses, divided into 
chambers, opening upon a central passageway through 
the structure from end to end, as in the Long Houses of 
the Iroquois. 

1 Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley. Smithsonian Contribu- 
tions to Knowledge. Vol I., PI. XV. 

2 lb. p. 50. 




Fig. 17. GROUND PLAN AND SECTION OF HOUSE, HIGH-BANK PUEBLO. 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 55 



The embankment, indeed, answered as a substitute for 
the first story of the house, which was usually from ten to 
twelve feet high, and closed up solid externally. The 
gateways entering the square were protected, it may be 
supposed, with palisades of round timber set in the ground, 
each row of stakes commencing at the opposite ends of the 
embankments, and contracting, after passing each other, to 
a narrow opening on the inside, which might be perma- 
nently closed. Indian tribes in a lower condition than the 
Mound Builders were familiar with palisades. The en- 
closed square was thus completely protected by the Long 
Houses standing upon the embankments, and by the 
gate-ways guarding the several entrances. The Pueblo, 
externally, would present a continuous rampart of earth, 
about ten feet high, around the enclosed area; upon this 
rampart the timber-framed houses, ten or twelve feet in 
height, with their walls coated thickly with earth or gravel, 
and sloping in a continuous line with the embankment, 
would form with it an unbroken wall not less than twenty 
feet high. 

It is not necessary that the actual form and structure of 
the houses of the Mound Builders should be shown, in 
order to establish the hypothesis that these embankments 
were the veritable sites of their houses. If it is made evi- 
dent that the summit platforms of these embankments 
would afford practicable sites for houses, adapted to the 
climate and to the modes of Indian life, this is all that can 
be required. The hypothesis rests upon the defensive prin- 
ciple in the house architecture of the Village Indians, and 
upon a state of the family requiring joint-tenement houses. 
To both of these requirements this conjectural restoration 
of one of the Pueblos of the Mound Builders responds in 
a remarkable manner. In the diversified forms of the houses 
of the Village Indians in all parts of America the defen- 
sive principle is a constant feature. Among the Mound 
Builders, a rampart of earth ten feet high around a village 



56 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



would afford no protection ; but surmounted with Long 
Houses, the walls of which rose continuous with the em- 
bankments, the strength of these walls, though of timber 
coated with earth, would render a rampart thus surmounted 
and doubled in height a formidable barrier against Indian 
assault. The second principle — that of communism in 
living in joint-tenement houses, which is exhibited not less 
clearly in the houses of the Village Indians in general 
than in the supposed houses of the Mound Builders — 
harmonized completely with the first. From the two to- 
gether sprang the house architecture of the American 
aborigines, with its diversities of form; and they seem 
sufficient for its explanation. The Mound Builders in their 
new area east of the Mississippi, finding it impossible to 
construct joint-tenement houses of the adobe brick to 
which they had been accustomed, substituted solid em- 
bankments of earth in place of the first story closed up ex- 
ternally, and erected triangular houses upon them, covered 
with earth. Circumstances having compelled a change of 
plan, one was adopted that involved no violent departure 
from former modes of construction. 1 

IV. The most interesting field of investigation in ab- 
original house-architecture is in Yucatan, Chiapas, Guate- 
mala, and Honduras, where it attained its highest form 
and reached its highest development. The adaptation to 
communistic living in large households is found in all the 
houses now in ruins in these areas. They are joint-tene- 
ment houses of the aboriginal American type. At the 
epoch of the Spanish conquest they were occupied Pue- 
blos, and were deserted by the Indians to escape the 
rapacity of Spanish military adventurers, by whom they 
were oppressed and abused beyond Indian endurance. 

1 The houses of the Mound Builders have been more fully considered by 
the writer in an article in the North American Review, July, 1876, entitled 
** Houses of Mound Builders." 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. S7 

Instances are mentioned by Herrera, where large num- 
bers of the people destroyed themselves to escape the 
exactions of Spanish masters, whom they were unable 
to resist. 1 The numerous ruins of Pueblos, scattered 
through the forests of Yucatan and southward, are so 
many monuments of Spanish misrule, avarice, and 
rapacity. 

Yucatan and Central America, at the time of the Spanish 
cona^est, were probably more thickly peopled than any 
other portion of North America of the same territorial 
extent ; and its inhabitants were more advanced than any 
other portion of the aborigines. Their Pueblos were 
planted along the water-courses, where such existed, often 
quite near each other, and presented the same picture of 
occupation and of village life found by the Spaniards, 
about the same time, on the Rio Chaco and Rio Grande, 
in New Mexico. They consisted of a single great house 
of stone, or of a cluster of great houses, forming one 
Pueblo. In some cases, four such structures were grouped 
together upon the same pyramidal platform. But there is 
no reason for supposing, from any ruins yet found, or from 
what is known of the condition of the Indian tribes at that 
time, that any one Pueblo in Yucatan or Central America 
contained as many as ten thousand inhabitants. Uxmal 
may possibly have contained as many, but this is mere 
conjecture. The people of Yucatan and Central America 
were found subdivided into a number of small tribes, and 
were in the same condition of disintegration and independ- 
ence as the inhabitants of other parts of North America. 
The country was covered with dense forests, except the 
limited clearings around the Pueblos, and was for the most 

1 Cortez sent "James de Mazagueros to reduce the people of Chiapas, 
who had revolted, which that commander effectually performed; for when 
they could resist no longer, those desperate wretches cast themselves, with 
their wives and children, headlong from precipices." — HerrercCs Hist, of 
America, III. 346. 



58 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



part uninhabited. Field agriculture was unknown, but the 
Indians cultivated in garden beds maize, beans, squashes, 
tobacco, pepper, and cotton; sometimes raising two or 
three crops during the year. This tended to localize them 
in villages. Herrera remarks of the Village Indians of 
Honduras, " that they sow thrice a year, and they were 
wont to grub up great woods with hatchets made of 
flint." 1 Without metallic implements to subdue the 
forests, or even with copper axes, only a very small 
portion of the country would be brought under cultiva- 
tion, and this would be confined to districts where water 
was accessible. 

Las Casas, Bishop of Chiapas, who was in Central 
America about 1539, after remarking of the people of 
Yucatan that they were " better civilized in morals and in 
what belongs to the good order of societies than the rest 
of the Indians," proceeds as follows : " The pretence of 
subjecting the Indians to the Government of Spain is only 
made to carry on the design of subjecting them to the 
dominion of private men, who make them all their slaves." 2 
And again he quotes from the letter of the Bishop of St. 
Martha to the King of Spain, as follows : " To redress the 
grievances of this province, it ought to be delivered from 
the tyranny of those who ravage it, and committed to the 
care of persons of integrity, who will treat the inhabitants 
with more kindness and humanity ; for if it be left to the 
mercy of the governors, who commit all sorts of outrages 
with impunity, the province will be destroyed in a very 
short time." 3 

It is sufficiently ascertained that, within a few years after 
the conquest of Mexico, Yucatan and Central America 
were overrun by military adventurers, whose rapacity and 
violence drove the harmless and timid Village Indians from 



1 History of America, 2d. ed. p. 725. Stevens's Trans. IV. 133. 

2 An Account of the First Voyages, etc. in America. 2d. ed. p. 699. 
Translation, p. 52. 3 lb. p. 61. 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 59 



their Pueblos into the forests, — thus destroying in a few 
years a higher culture than the Spaniards substituted in 
its place. Nothing can be plainer, we think, than the 
following facts: (i) That the houses now in ruins in these 
areas were occupied Pueblos at the time of the Spanish 
conquest; (2) That the present Indians in these countries 
are the descendants of the people who constructed these 
houses; and (3) That all there ever was of Palenque, 
Uxmal, Copan, and other Indian Pueblos in these coun- 
tries, building for building, and stone for stone, is now 
there in ruins. 

Ground plans and elevations of Yucatan houses are 
necessary for comparison with those previously given. 
They will be taken chiefly from the ruins of Uxmal, which 
are the best known and the most extensive ruins in Yucatan. 
Several stone structures are here found upon six pyram- 
idal elevations. These, together, formed the Pueblo of 
Uxmal, now called the " Governor's House," the " House 
of the Nuns," the " House of the Pigeons," the " House of 
the Turtles," the " House of the Dwarf," and the " House 
of the Old Woman." There are said to be traces of some 
other buildings of inconsiderable size. They are con- 
structed of stone, laid in regular courses, and partially 
dressed, as represented by Mr. John L. Stephens. The 
upper half of the exterior walls, as of many other Yucatan 
structures, are decorated with grotesque ornaments cut in 
the faces of the stones. Foster says : " These structures 
are composed of a soft coralline limestone of compara- 
tively recent geological formation, probably of the tertiary 
period." 1 Norman had previously described the material 
used as " a fine concrete limestone." 2 Elsewhere, with 
respect to the kind of tools used in cutting this stone, he 
remarks that " flint was undoubtedly used." 3 It is also 
to be noticed that the size of the stone used in all these 

1 Prehistoric Races in the United States, p. 398. 

2 Rambles in Yucatan, p. 126. 3 lb. p. 184. 



60 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



edifices is remarkably small. Norman, speaking of the 
ruins of Chichen, remarks, that " the stones are cut in 
parallelopipeds of about twelve inches in length and six 
in breadth, the interstices filled up of the same material of 
which the terraces are composed;" 1 but he also speaks 
of " large blocks of hewn stone used in the doorways." 2 
The height of these buildings is generally about twenty- 
five feet, rarely thirty feet. A soft coralline limestone 
could be easily worked when first taken from the quarry, 
and would harden after exposure to the air. 

The style of architecture in New Mexico brought the 
Indians to the house-tops as a common place of living, to 




Fig. 18. SECTION OF PYRAMIDAL ELEVATION OF GOVERNOR'S 
HOUSE AT UXMAL. SIDE VIEW. 



which their flat roofs were adapted. This habit, first adop- 
ted for security, became in time a settled custom. The 
same object of security was met, in Yucatan and Central 
America, by another expedient ; namely, a pyramidal plat- 
form or elevation (Fig. 18), twenty, thirty, and forty feet 
high, upon the level summit of which large joint-tenement 
houses were erected. Besides these, there were small 
buildings, having a special purpose, erected on platforms 
still higher. A natural elevation was selected when prac- 
ticable ; the top was levelled or raised by artificial means ; 
the sides made rectangular and sloping, and faced with 
dry stone walls, the ascent being made by flights of stone 
steps. It was not uncommon to form three such plat- 
forms, one above the other, as shown in the figure. 



1 Rambles in Yucatan, p. 127. 



2 lb. p. 128. 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 6l 



The Governor's House is symmetrical in structure, three 
hundred and twenty-two feet long, thirty-six feet wide, 
and thirty feet high, consisting of but one story. Each 
apartment has a peculiar triangular ceiling of stone. 
It has no windows but eleven doorways in front, and 
contains twenty-four apartments, two of which are each 
sixty feet long. The rear wall is solid, with the ex- 
ception of two doorways entering single apartments. 
This wall is nine feet thick through the greater part 
of its extent. A parallel wall through the centre di- 
vides the interior into two rows of apartments, of 
which those in front are eleven feet and six inches 
wide, and those in the rear thirteen feet wide. The only 
light received in the back rooms is through the door- 
ways immediately in front, as the outer and inner door- 
ways face each other. 

This house stands upon the upper of three terraces or 
platforms, of which Mr. Stephen says : " The lowest of 
these terraces is three feet high, fifteen feet broad, and five 
hundred and seventy-five feet long; the second is twenty 
feet high, two hundred and fifty feet wide, and five hundred 
and forty-five feet in length; and the third, on which the 
building stands, is nineteen feet high, thirty feet broad, and 
three hundred and sixty feet in front." 1 As the building 
is thirty-six feet wide, he probably means that the terrace 
is thirty feet broad in front of the building. The general 
plan of the ruins at Uxmal shows that this house stands in 
the middle of the upper platform. The sides of these ter- 
races were faced with " substantial stone walls." 

The edifices in Yucatan and Central America are almost 
invariably but one story high, and but two rooms deep, 
the walls being carried up vertically to an equal height, 
and terminating in a flat top or roof. The doorways 
opened upon a platform area, called the terrace, and the 
place was defended on the line or edge of the terrace 

1 Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, I., 180. 



62 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



walls. Neither adobe brick nor adobe roofs could with- 
stand this tropical climate, with its pouring rains during 
a portion of the year. Stone and a vaulted ceiling were 
necessary to a durable structure. Upon these elevated 
platforms the inhabitants enjoyed the same security as 
the Village Indians of New Mexico on their roof-tops and 
within their walls. They were also above the flight of the 
mosquito and garapitos, the scourges of this tropical cli- 
mate, as well as reasonably protected from the reptiles 
with which the region abounds. Considering the sur- 
rounding conditions, these single-storied houses of stone 
upon raised platforms harmonize with the communal 
type of architecture as fully as the form in New Mexico 
or in the valley of the Columbia. None of the houses 
in Yucatan and Central America have fireplaces or 
chimneys, which shows that no cooking was done in them. 
The rooms in them do not communicate, but are either 
single or in pairs, and are entered from the terrace ; and 
this peculiarity of itself refutes the surmise that any one 
of these structures was a palace. It tends to show that 
these rooms were occupied by groups of persons, whose 
sections of the house were separated from each other 
by solid division walls, and that the food for each group 
was cooked on the terraces, at separate fires, from com- 
mon stores, and divided at the kettle. 

We now come to the important inquiry, whether the 
American Indians had reached a knowledge of the post 
and lintel as a principle of construction in their architect- 
ure. It will be understood that the pier is the stone equiv- 
alent of the post. The use of the pier and lintel is the 
first characterized stage of scientific architecture in stone. 
The lintel of wood has been found in New Mexico, but 
not the lintel of stone, except in occasional instances. 1 
Speaking of the Governor's House, Mr. Stephens remarks 

1 I found a stone lintel, about eighteen inches in length, over an opening 
in a Cliff House on the Mancos River, in 1878. The wall was of stone. 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 63 



that " the doors are all gone, and the wooden lintels over 
them have fallen." 1 " In some of the inner apartments 
the lintels were still in their places over the doorways, 
and some were lying on the floor, sound and solid, which 
latter condition was no doubt owing to their being more 
sheltered than those over the outer doorway." 2 The same 
is true of the House of the Nuns, and of a large number 
of other structures figured and described in Mr. Ste- 
phens's work. But lintels of stone were found in a num- 
ber of buildings. Thus of one of the houses at Kabah, 
he says, "The lintels over the door are of stone." 3 In 
this case, as appears from Mr. Stephens's plate, there was 
a stone column in the middle of the doorway, and the 
lintel was in two sections ; but there were a number of 
cases where single lintels of stone were found. Norman, 
speaking of the ruins of Chichen, remarks that " the 
doorways are nearly a square of about seven feet, some- 
what resembling the Egyptian, the sides of which are 
formed of large blocks of hewn stone. In some instances 
the lintels are of the same material." 4 Sapote wood 
was often used for lintels, — a wood remarkable for its 
solidity and durability. It may safely be said that the 
lintel of wood was the rule in Yucatan and Central America, 
and not the exception ; that the Indians understood the use 
of the lintel, but that the constant use of the stone lintel, 
which alone was capable of affording a durable structure, 
was beyond their ability, or at least their means. It can- 
not be said, therefore, that the use of the pier and lintel of 
stone had become a principle of construction in their ar- 
chitecture. As the Mayas who constructed these edifices 
were in the middle status of barbarism, it was not to 
be expected that their architecture would bear such a 
high test of advancement as the use of the pier and lintel 

1 Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, I., 175. 

2 lb. I., 178. 3 lb. I., 398. 
* Rambles in Yucatan, p. 128. 



6 4 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



of stone would imply. Mankind are compelled to feel 
their way experimentally in architecture, as in other de- 
partments of knowledge. 

" The House of the Nuns " (Fig. 20), says Mr. Stephens, 
" is quadrangular, with a courtyard in the centre. It stands 
on the highest of three terraces. The lowest is three feet 
high and twenty feet wide; the second, twelve feet high 
and forty-five feet wide ; and the third, four feet high and 
five feet wide, extending the whole length of the front 
of the building. The front [building] is two hundred and 
seventy-nine feet long, and above the cornice, from one 
end to the other, it is ornamented with sculptures. In the 
centre is a gateway ten feet, eight inches wide, spanned by 
a triangular arch, and leading to the courtyard. On each 
side of this gateway are four doorways, with wooden lintels, 
opening to apartments averaging twenty-four feet long, 
ten feet wide, and seventeen feet high to the top of the 
roof, but having no communication with each other. The 
building that forms the right or eastern side of the quad- 
rangle is one hundred and fifty-eight feet long; that on 
the left is one hundred and seventy-three feet long; and 
the range opposite, or at the end of the quadrangle, 
measures two hundred and sixty-four feet. These three 
ranges of buildings have no doorways outside, but the 
exterior of each is a dead wall, and above the cornice 
all are ornamented with the same rich and elaborate 
sculpture." 1 

The four buildings contain in the aggregate seventy- 
six apartments, which vary in size from ten to twelve feet 
wide, and from twenty to thirty feet long. There are 
twenty single apartments, and twenty-four pairs of apart- 
ments, half of which, as in the Governor's House, are dark, 
except as they are lighted from the doorway of the room 
in front. In the structure on the right, in the figure, there 
are six rooms connected with each other, which number is 

1 Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, L, 299. 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 65 



so unusual as to attract attention. The subjoined figure of 
the interior of a room is the centre front room, showing 
the doorway into the back room, and also out upon the 
terrace, as well as the doorway into the small room at the 
end. Each of these joint-tenement houses would accommo- 
date, after the fashion of the Village Indians, an average of 
five hundred persons. 

The House of the Pigeons consists of two quadrangles, of 
which the second is some steps higher than the first. The 
enclosed court of the first is one hundred and eighty feet 
long and one hundred and fifty-six feet wide, and has 
buildings in ruins in three sides. Passing through and out 
of the court by an arched gateway, and ascending a flight 
of eleven steps, the second court is entered, which is one 
hundred feet long by eighty-five feet wide, with ruined 
buildings on the two sides, and a teocallis of earth at the 
opposite end, two hundred feet in length and one hundred 
and twenty feet wide, and about fifty feet high. Upon the 
top stands a long, narrow building one hundred feet long 
by thirty feet wide, divided into three apartments. 1 The 
buildings upon the two courts, like the House of the Nuns, 
were the residence portion of this part of the Pueblo. No 
ground plans are given, and the elevation of a portion of 
the structure given in Stephens's work shows a difference 
in the style of the masonry. The Governor's House com- 
pares very well with the Tecpan of the Pueblo of Mexico, 
which was the " Official House of the Tribe," as explained 
by Mr. Bandelier in his valuable and instructive essay 
" On the social organization of the Ancient Mexicans," in 
the twelfth annual report of the Peabody Museum at 
Cambridge. 2 The House of the Nuns and the two quad- 
rangles called the House of the Pigeons were probably the 
homes of the body of the tribe which constructed and 
inhabited this Pueblo. 

1 Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, L, 319. 

2 Report, pp. 645, 654, 671. 

5 



66 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



The view (Fig. 21) of the interior of a room in the 
House of the Nuns is taken, like the three preceding and 
the three succeeding figures, from Stephens's " Incidents 
of Travel in Yucatan." It is the central front room in 
the building on the right hand, where six rooms, front and 
rear, communicated with each other. It shows the form 
of the triangular ceiling common in all the principal 
edifices in Yucatan and Central America at the period of 
the Spanish conquest. It is a triangular arch without a 
keystone, and without the principle of the arch ; but the 
edges of the stone are bevelled, and form a perfect vault 
over each apartment, except a space a foot wide in the 
centre at the peak, where the wall is carried up vertically 
a foot or more, and then covered with a cap of stone. The 
mechanical principle is the same as in a doorway found 
in New Mexico by Lieutenant Simpson ; but here applied, 
on a more extended and more difficult scale, to form the 
ceiling of the room, and also a gateway through a building 
into a court. It is the most remarkable feature in this 
architecture, mechanically considered. This vaulted ceil- 
ing was constructed over a solid core of masonry, after- 
wards removed. A projecting, external wall at the line of 
the top of the doorways was carried up flush with the 
cornice to the top of the building. This served to balance 
the inward projection of the ceiling as it rose toward the 
peak. When the two sides were capped with flat stones 
at the centre, and the masonry had been carried up five or 
more feet above the cap, the superincumbent mass held the 
ceiling in its place, the weight resting on the side walls. 

The cross section (Fig. 22) shows the relations of the 
walls to the ceiling and the mass of the masonry above. 
Once constructed over a core, with the masonry above 
in place, the removal of the core would not endanger 
the structure. 

Near Uxmal are the interesting ruins of Zayi, which 
present a new feature in Yucatan house-building. Upon a 



Fig. 21. INTERIOR OF AN APARTMENT IN THE "HOUSE OF 
THE NUNS," UXMAL. 



68 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



low eminence are three independent structures, the second 
within and above the first, and the third within and above 
the second, presenting in the distance the appearance of 
a single quadrangular edifice in three receding stories 
(Fig. 23). But each stands on a separate terrace, and is 
built against the base of the one immediately above it, 
except the inner one, which stands upon the summit plat- 
form. The outer quadrangle stands on the lowest terrace. 
The measurements of the several buildings are indicated on 
the plan. They contained, in the aggregate, eighty-seven 
apartments, assuming the part in ruins to have corre- 
sponded with the parts preserved. The rooms are single 
or in pairs. A staircase upon the front and rear divides 
the building on these sides from the lower terrace to the 
upper. The dots in the apertures indicate columns, which 
are found in this and several other structures. 

Attention has been called to the Pueblo of Zayi for a 
special reason. It seems to furnish conclusive proof of 
the manner in which these great structures were erected, 
and how the peculiar vaulting was constructed, which is 
the striking feature of the Yucatan and Central- American 
architecture. 

Mr. Stephens found every room of the back building on 
the second terrace filled with masonry from bottom to top. 
He remarks that " the north side of the second range has 
a curious and uuaccountable feature. It is called the Casa 
Cerrada, or ' closed house,' having ten doorways, all of 
which are blocked up on the inside with stone and mortar. 
. . . In front of several were piles of stones, which they 
(his men) had worked out from the doorways, and under 
the lintels were holes, through which we were able to 
crawl inside ; and here we found ourselves in apartments 
finished with walls and ceilings like all the others, but 
filled up (except so far as they had been emptied by the 
Indians) with solid masses of mortar and stone. There 
were ten of these apartments in all, two hundred and 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 69 



twenty feet long and ten feet deep, which being thus filled 
up made the whole building a solid mass. And the 
strangest feature was that the filling up of the apartments 
must have been simultaneous with the erection of the 
buildings ; for as the filling in rose above the tops of the 
doorways, the men who performed it never could have 
entered to their work through the doors. It must have 
been done as the walls were built, and the ceiling must 
have closed' over a solid mass. Why this was so con- 
structed it was impossible to say, unless the solid mass 
was required for the support of the upper terrace; and if 
this was the case, it would seem to have been much easier 
to erect a solid structure at once, without any division into 
apartments." 1 

It does not seem to have occurred to Mr. Stephens that 
the masonry within each room was a core, without which a 
vaulted chamber in this form could not have been con- 
structed, with such knowledge of the art of building as the 
Indians possessed. It shows the rudeness of their mechani- 
cal resources, and the real condition of the arts among 
them ; but at the same time it increases our estimate of 
their originality, ingenuity, and industry. They were 
working their way experimentally in architecture, as all 
other peoples have done, and they might well point with 
pride to these structures as extraordinary monuments of 
the progress they had made. 

Several important conclusions follow: — 

1. That these structures were built gradually, one build- 
ing at a time, and were, so to speak, the work of genera- 
tions. 

2. That the " closed house" was the last constructed of 
the middle quadrangle of this Pueblo ; and had not been 
emptied of its core and brought into use when the irruption 
of the Spaniards, in all probability, forced the people to 
abandon their Pueblo. 

1 Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, II. 22. 



70 



A R CHJE 0L 0 GICA L INSTITUTE. 



3. This would fix the period of its construction about 
A. D. 1520, thus settling the question of the modern date 
of this Pueblo ; and also tending to remove one of the 
delusions concerning the antiquity of the Yucatan and 
Central-American houses of stone. This edifice is as 
much decayed as any other in Yucatan. 

4. That these houses were without windows, fire- 
places, or chimneys, imperfectly lighted, and without 
ventilation. 

The Mayas of Yucatan were organized in gentes or clans. 
This fact has an important bearing upon the manner in 
which their houses were occupied in the aboriginal period. 
Herrera makes frequent reference to the " kindred," and 
in such a manner, with regard to the tribes of Central 
America, as to imply the existence of a body of persons, 
organized upon the basis of consanguinity, much more 
numerous than would be found apart from gentes. Thus : 
" He that killed a freeman was to make satisfaction to the 
children and kindred." 1 This was said of the aborigines 
of Nicaragua: had it been of the Iroquois, who were 
organized in gentes, and among whom the usage was the 
same, the term kindred would plainly have been equivalent 
to gens. And again, speaking generally of the Mayas of 
Yucatan, he remarks that " when any satisfaction was to 
be made for damages, if he who was adjudged to pay was 
like to be reduced to poverty, the kindred contributed 
(a gentile usage). . . . They were wont to observe their 
pedigrees very much, and therefore thought themselves all 
related, and were helpful to one another (another gentile 
usage). . . . They did not marry mothers or sisters-in-law, 
nor any that bore the same name as their father, which was 
looked upon as unlawful." 2 The pedigree of an Indian, 
under their system of consanguinity, could have no signifi- 
cance apart from the gens. The family, in our sense, was 
unknown among them, and the names of brothers and 

1 General History of America, III. 299. 2 lb. IV. 171. 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 7 1 



sisters would indicate no family connection between them. 
There was no possible way, under Indian institutions, by 
which a father and his children could bear the same name, 
except through a gens, which conferred a gentile name 
upon all its members. It would also require descent in 
the male line to bring father and children into the same 
gens. The statement also shows that intermarriage in 
the gens, among the Mayas, was prohibited. Assuming 
the correctness of Herrera's words, it is proof conclusive 
of the existence of gentes among the Mayas, with descent 
in the male line. The fact of this organization renders 
it probable that the apartments in these houses were 
occupied by groups of gentile kindred, as the houses of 
the Iroquois and the Creeks are known to have been 
occupied. The groups were separated from each other 
by solid partition walls, but the terraces were common 
to all. 

The plan of domestic life in these houses, at the period 
of Spanish discovery, is imperfectly known. On a matter 
so eminently practical as the manner of living of the 
people, the first explorers and relators have given very 
meagre accounts. Herrera speaks of the houses in Yuca- 
tan as remarkable, but says only that there " were so many 
and such stately stone buildings that it was amazing; and 
the greatest wonder is that, having no use of any metal, 
they were able to raise such structures." 1 He also re- 
marks upon the hospitality of the people as follows: 
" They are still generous and freehearted, so that they will 
make everybody eat that comes into their houses, which 
is everywhere practised in travelling." 2 From the ground 
plans of their houses it is plain that, while differing from 
those in New Mexico in form and mode of construction, 
they were the same in principle. Each family did not 
require a single house; and though, with our present 
knowledge, it cannot be positively asserted that the groups 
i History of America, 2d. ed. IV. 162. 2 lb. IV. 171. 



72 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



of families practised communism in living, yet it seems 
extremely probable that this was the case. 

Stephens, at the time of his second visit to Yucatan, 
in 1 841, found at least one case of communism in living, 
at a settlement near Uxmal, in a group of five hundred 
Maya Indians, — the veritable descendants of the Mayas 
who built the House of the Nuns, the House of the Pigeons, 
and the Governor's House. He made this discovery by 
mere accident, while among them to employ laborers. 
" This community," he remarks, " consists of a hundred la- 
bradores or working-men ; their lands are held and wrought 
in common, and the products are shared by all. Their 
food is prepared at one hut, and every family sends for its 
portion, which explained a singular spectacle we had seen 
on our arrival, — a procession of women and children, 
each carrying an earthen bowl containing a quantity of 
smoking hot broth, all coming down the same road-, and 
dispersing among the different huts. . . . From our igno- 
rance of the language (Maya), and the number of other 
and more pressing matters claiming our attention, we could 
not learn all the details of their internal economy, but it 
seemed to approximate that improved state of association 
which is sometimes heard of among us ; and as theirs 
has existed for an unknown length of time, and can no 
longer be considered merely experimental, Owen or Fou- 
rier might perhaps take lessons from them with advan- 
tage." 1 A hundred working-men indicates a total of five 
hundred persons, who were then depending for their daily 
food upon a single fire, the provision being supplied from 
common stores, and divided from the cauldron. This is, 
not unlikely, a truthful picture of the life of their fore- 
fathers in the House of the Nuns and in the House of the 
Pigeons, at the Pueblo of Uxmal, at the period of European 
discovery. 

1 Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, II. 14. 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 73 



V. Little more has been done, with respect to the ruins in 
Yucatan and Central America, up to the present time, than 
the preparation of ground plans and elevations of a number 
of these structures, with detailed descriptions of the better 
portions of the work. For this we are mainly indebted to 
the labors of the late Mr. John L. Stephens, whose works 
upon these ruins are a remarkable monument of individual 
enterprise. But Mr. Stephens deceived himself with the 
imaginary conception that Yucatan and Central America 
were filled with cities in ruins ; and he imparts this delu- 
sion steadily to his readers. It was an honest mistake, 
and very excusable at the time of Mr. Stephens's expedi- 
tion. The greater part of the country was covered with a 
dense forest; thorough exploration was impossible with 
his limited force; the ruins were intrinsically highly re- 
markable ; and he was unacquainted with the history and 
condition of the Sedentary Village Indians. In the preface 
to his last work he speaks of " visits to forty-four ruined 
cities, or places in which remains or vestiges of ancient 
population were found." 1 " Ancient city," " Indian city," 
" another city," "ruined cities," "great cities," are terms 
constantly used by Mr. Stephens in connection with these 
small Indian Pueblos. Every cluster of ruins was once 
a city of unknown extent, as well as of civilization and 
refinement, inhabited by a " mysterious people." " Close 
together," he remarks, " as we had found the remains of 
habitations, it seemed hardly possible that distinct and 
independent cities had existed with but such a little space 
between ; and it was harder to imagine that one city had 
embraced within its limits these distant buildings, the ex- 
treme ones being four miles apart, and that the whole 
intermediate region had once swarmed with a teem- 
ing and active population." 2 Had Mr. Stephens been 
familiar with the manner in which the present Pueblos in 
New Mexico are located, and more especially those now 

1 Incidents of Travel in Yucatan, etc., preface. 2 lb. II. 8i. 



74 



A R CHAL OL 0 GICA L INSTITUTE. 



in ruins, which were contemporary with the houses in 
ruins in Yucatan (as on the Rio Chaco, where seven dis- 
tinct Pueblos are found in the same valley within an extent 
of ten miles 1 ), he would have had no occasion to be sur- 
prised at finding Pueblos four miles apart, and no ground 
for the absurd conjecture that the intermediate district of 
what he fancied was once one great city was occupied by 
the common people living in huts. There is no evidence 
that such a state of society as implied by Mr. Stephens's 
terms ever existed in Yucatan. 

When Mr. Stephens and his accomplished draughtsman, 
Mr. Catherwood, first visited Central America in 1839, the 
explorations of Del Rio, and the later ones of Dupaix at 
Palenque, were becoming known, and were exciting vague 
and high expectations in the public mind, which Mr. 
Stephens undertook to gratify by more extended ex- 
plorations. Great cities in ruins, sculptures, hieroglyphs, 
palaces, temples, public buildings, and pyramidal eleva- 
tions on which they were erected were mentioned freely in 
connection with these remains. A false terminology thus 
sprang up to stimulate the unwary reader, which has re- 
mained to the present time, — a most pernicious incum- 
brance upon American ethnology and archaeology. A 
palace implies a king, or potentate of some kind, with 
power to enforce the labor of the people to build palaces 
for his exclusive use ; a city implies numbers, a highly 
organized society, and stable subsistence ; and civilization 
implies a high degree of culture and advancement. When 
America was discovered there were found two Pueblos of 
large size — that of Mexico and that of Cuzco in Peru — 
and a large number of small Pueblos, such as that at Pal- 
enque and at Uxmal; but there was no city, no palace, 
no civilization, and no State (civitas), as these terms are 
properly understood. The elements of civilization are 

1 Seven villages of the Mound Builders on the Scioto were found within 
an extent of ten miles. 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. J$ 



gained only by immense labor, and outside of the Aryan 
and Semitic families it can scarcely be said at that time to 
have existed. It has become absolutely necessary, in 
order to speak of the tribes of mankind in an intelligent 
manner, to discriminate the ethnical condition of society 
according to relative progress. 

Mr. Stephens, in his valuable works, showed a disposi- 
tion to feed the flames of fancy with respect to these 
ruins. After describing the palace, so called, at Palenque, 
and remarking that " the whole extent of ground covered 
by those [ruins] as yet known, as appears by the plan, is 
not larger than our Park or Battery in New York," he 
proceeds : " It is proper to add, however, that, considering 
the space now occupied by the ruins as the site of palaces, 
temples, and public buildings, and supposing the houses 
of the inhabitants to have been, like those of the Egyptians 
and the present race of Indians, of frail and perishable 
materials, and as at Memphis and Thebes to have disap- 
peared altogether, the city may have covered an immense 
extent." 1 This is a clear case of suggestio falsi by Mr. 
Stephens, who is usually so careful and reliable, and even 
here so guarded in his language. He had fallen into the 
mistake of regarding these remains as a city in ruins, 
instead of a small Indian Pueblo in ruins. But he had 
furnished a general ground plan of all the ruins found of 
the Palenque Pueblo, which made it plain that four or five 
structures upon pyramidal platforms, at some distances 
from each other, with the whole space over which they 
were scattered no larger than the Battery in New York, 
made a poor show for a city. The most credulous reader 
would readily perceive that it was a misnomer to call them 
the ruins of a city ; wherefore, the suggestions of Mr. 
Stephens that " considering the space now occupied by 
the ruins as the site of palaces, temples, and public build- 
ings, and supposing the houses of the inhabitants ... of 
1 Incidents of Travel in Central America, Chiapas, and Yucatan, II. 355. 



;6 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



frail and perishable materials, . . the city may have cov- 
ered an immense extent." That Mr. Stephens himself 
considered or supposed either to be true may have been 
the case ; but he is responsible for the false coloring thus 
put upon these ruins, and for the deceptive inferences 
drawn from them. 1 

" When we attempt to explain the Palace at Palenque or 
the Governor's House at Uxmal as the residences of In- 
dian potentates, they are wholly unintelligible ; but as 
communal houses, embodying the defensive and commu- 
nal principles, we can understand how they could have 
been erected, and so laboriously and elaborately finished. 
It is evident that they were the work of the people, con- 
structed for their own protection and enjoyment. En- 
forced labor never created them. On the contrary, it is 
the charm of all these edifices that they were raised by 
the Indians for their own use, with willing hands, and oc- 
cupied by them on terms of entire equality. And it is 
highly creditable to the Indian mind that, while in the 
middle period of barbarism, they had developed the ca- 

1 That honest men are in danger of falling into the trap so unguardedly set 
by Mr. Stephens is proved by the latest utterances respecting these Yucatan 
and Central-American ruins. My friend Prof. Charles Rau, the trusted 
archaeologist of the Smithsonian Institution, turns these vicious suggestions 
of Mr Stephens into positive assertions, as follows . " The buildings, on the 
whole, were either temples or dwellings for princes and other persons of 
rank. The common people lived near these structures in habitations of 
perishable character, all traces of which have long disappeared. Such an 
assemblage of substantial and frail structures may have constituted a Yucatec 
city in olden time." (Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, 1879, No. 331. 
The Palenque Tablet, p. 70.) With our present knowledge of the houses, in- 
stitutions, and mode of life of the Village Indians, there is no justification for 
these assertions of Mr. Rau. They belong to the class of puerile conceptions, 
and their tendency is to stultify and disfigure American archaeology. These 
structures are highly creditable to the intelligence of their builders, and can 
be made to reveal the actual progress they had made in the arts of life. It 
is to be regretted that views of this nature should be indorsed by such high 
authority as the Smithsonian Institution. 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 



pacity to rear structures of such architectural design and 
imposing magnitude." 1 

In this paper I have endeavored to present some rea- 
sons which render it desirable to send a competent com- 
mission to re-examine all these ruins of ancient houses, 
from the San Juan to the Isthmus of Darien. Such 
a commission should utilize the work already done in 
New Mexico, in Yucatan, and in Central America, and 
extend it wherever necessary. It should ascertain by 
actual exploration and investigation, — 

1. The architectural style and extent of these ruins, and the 
ground plans of the principal structures. 

2. The condition of the art of masonry and of house construc- 
tion, as shown by these ruins. 

3. The object and uses for which these houses were erected. 

4. The social organization, usages, and customs of the native 
tribes in New Mexico, Yucatan, and Central America, and, so far as 
possible, those of their ancestors, who constructed these houses. 



LIST OF WORKS RELATING TO NEW MEXICO 
AND ARIZONA. 

Marcos De Niza. — A Relation of the Rev. Father Friar Marco 
De Niea, touching his discovery of the kingdom of Cevola or 
Cibola in 1539. Hakluyt's Collection of Voyages, Lond. Ed., 
1600. Vol. iii. 

French Version. Relation de Frere Marcos de Niza. Collection 
of H. Terneaux-Compans. Vol. ix., p. 256. 

1 Johnson's Universal Cyclopaedia. Article, " Architecture of the Amer- 
ican Aborigines," Vol. I., 229. 



78 



A R CHAZ OLO GICA L INSTITUTE. 



Coroxado. — The Relation of Francis Vasquez De Coronado, 
Captain General of the people which were sent in the name of 
the Emperor's Majesty to the Country of Cibola, 1540. Hak- 
luyt, Vol. iii. 

Lettres de Vasquez Coronado, Gouverneur de la Nouvelle Galice, 

Coll. H. Ternaux-Compans, Vol. ix., p. 352. 
Pedro de Castaxeda de Nagera. — Relation du Voyage de 

Cibola, enterpris en 1540 par Pedro de Castaiieda de Nagera. 

Coll. H. Ternaux-Compans. Vol. ix., p. i. Paris, 1838. 
Juan Jaramtllo. — Relation du Voyage fait a la Nouvelle-Terre 

sous les ordres du general Francisco Vasquez de Coronado, 

commandant de l'expedition. Redigee par le Capitaine Juan 

Jaramillo. Coll. H. Ternaux-Compans. Vol. ix., p. 364. 
Gomara. — The Rest of this Voyage to Acuco, Tiguex, Cicuic, and 

Quivira, etc. By Francis Lopez de Gomara. Hakluyt, Vol. iii. 
Alarcox. — Relation de la Navigation et de la Decouverte faite par 

le Capitaine Fernando Alarcon. Coll. H. Ternaux-Compans, 

vol. ix., p. 299. 

AuGusxrx Ruyz and Axtoxio de Espejo. — A Brief Relation of 
Two Notable Voyages ; the first made by Friar Augustin Ruyz, 
a Franciscan, in the year 1581 ; the second, by Antonio de 
Espejo, in the year 1583, who, together with his company, dis- 
covered a land, etc., which they named New Mexico. Hak- 
luyt, vol. iii. 

The accounts of the events connected with the formation and history of 
the Spanish Missions in New Mexico, and of Spanish intercourse with the 
Pueblo Indians down to 1846, are scattered in various sources, and will be 
passed over The connection of the United States with New Mexico, which 
formerly included Arizona and the southern parts of Colorado, Utah, and 
Nevada, may be stated briefly as follows : It was conquered from Mexico in 
1846, was ceded by treaty in 1848, and has since formed a part of the United 
States. 

Josiah Gregg. — Commerce of the Prairies, by Josiah Gregg. 
New York. Henry G. Langley, 1844. 2 vols., 320 p. each. 

The author was the first to call attention to the Pueblos on the Rio 
Chaco. 

Emory, Abert, St. George Cooke, axd Johnston. — Notes of a 
Military Reconnoissance from Fort Leavenworth, in Missouri, 
to San Diego, in California, in 1846-7. By Lieutenant-Colonel 



HOUSES OF AMERICAN ABORIGINES. 79 



W. H. Emory. Together with the reports of Lieutenant J. W. 
Abert and Lieutenant-Colonel P. St. George Cooke, and the 
Journal of Captain A. R. Johnston, United States Executive 
Document, No. 41. Thirtieth Congress, First Session, 1848. 
This volume contains representations of the Casas Grandes of the Gila, 

of the ruins of Pecos, Abo, and Valverde, and views of the Pueblos of Acoma, 

Santa Domingo, Santa Ana, and Noquino. 

Lieutenant James H. Simpson. — Journal of a Military Recon- 
noissance from Santa Fe, New Mexico, to the Navajo Country 
in 1849. By Lieutenant James H. Simpson. United States 
Senate Executive Document, No. 64. Thirty-first Congress, 
First Session, 1850. 

This Report contains the first presentation of the ruins on the Rio Chaco, 

with ground-plans, elevations, and numerous plates. 

Captain L. Sitgreaves. — Report of an expedition down the Zuni 
and Colorado Rivers. By Captain L. Sitgreaves, Corps Topo- 
graphical Engineers. Government Printer, 1854. Senate 
Executive Document. Thirty-third Congress, First Session. 
This Report contains a view of a part of the Pueblo of Zuhi, and of a 

room in a Pueblo, with representations of the Zuhians in costume, but the 

text contains very little explanation of either. 

John Russell Bartlett. — Personal Narrative of Explorations 
and Incidents in Texas, New Mexico, etc. By John Russell 
Bartlett. Appleton & Co., 1856. 2 vols. 

Lieutenant Joseph C. Ives. — Report upon the Colorado River 
of the West, explored in 1857 and 1858 by Lieutenant Joseph 
C. Ives. Senate Executive Document, No. 90. Thirty-sixth 
Congress, First Session. 1859-60. 

Whipple, Ewbank, and Turner. — Report upon the Indian Tribes. 
By Lieutenant A. W. Whipple, Thomas Ewbank, Esq., and 
Professor William W. Turner, 1855. Explorations for a Rail- 
road Route from the Mississippi River to the Pacific (near 35 th 
parallel), vol. hi. 

It contains a large amount of information concerning the Pueblo Indians 
and their languages. 

Henry R. Schoolcraft. — History, Condition, and Prospect of 
the Indian Tribes of the United States, by authority of Congress, 
in six vols., quarto, 1851-1857. 

These volumes contain a large amount of information concerning the 
Pueblo Indians, with representations of some of their Pueblos, as Zuni and 
Saguna ; also of their costumes and languages. 



80 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



W. W. H. Davis. — El Gringo, or New Mexico and her People. 
By W. W. H. Davis. New York. 1857. 

This work contains a large amount of very interesting information con- 
cerning the Pueblo Indians, from the commencement of Spanish intercourse 
with them. It has engravings of the two structures forming the Pueblos of 
Taos. 

Albert Gallatin. — Transactions of the American Ethnological 
Society. New York. 2 vols., 1845- 1848. 

These volumes contain much valuable information, particularly in Mr. 
Gallatin's essay on "The Semi-Civilization of New Mexico." 

William H. Holmes. — Report on the Ruins of southwestern 
Colorado. By William H. Holmes. United States Geological 
and Geographical Survey of Colorado and Adjacent Territory, 
F. V. Hayden, Geologist in Charge, pp. 381-408. With numer- 
ous plates and illustrations. 1876. 

Contains a full account of the Cliff Houses and Round Towers on the 
Mancos River in Colorado. 

William H. Jackson. — Report on the Ruins of the San. Juan 
Region, with a Re-examination of the Ruins on the Rio Chaco, 
with ground plans and numerous plates, by William H. Jackson. 
Id. pp. 409-449- 

Contains much valuable information concerning the ruins in Colorado, 
with a full presentation of the ruins on the Chaco, and a restoration of the 
Pueblo of Bonito. 

John D. Baldwin. — Ancient America, in Notes on American 
Archaeology by John D. Baldwin, A.M. New York. 1872. 

Hubert H. Bancroft. — The Native Races of the Pacific States. 
By Hubert H. Bancroft. 5 vols. New York. 1874-76. 



ANCIENT WALLS ON MONTE LEONE. 

IN THE PROVINCE OF GROSSETO, ITALY. 
By W. J. STILLMAN. 

6 




MAP OF MONTE LEONE AND ITS NEIGHBORHOOD. 



ANCIENT WALLS ON MONTE LEONE, IN THE 
PROVINCE OF GROSSETO, ITALY. 



To the Executive Committee of the Archczological Institute 
of America: 

Gentlemen, — I have the honor to report as to the 
ruins on Monte Leone, in the Tuscan Maremma, that, 
having been informed by Marchese Salviati Corsi, — the 
proprietor of the estate on which the greater part of them 
lie, — that I had. his consent to excavate on his land, and 
that if I would come to his residence at Monte Pescali, 
he would give me such indications and authorizations as 
would most facilitate my work, I accordingly visited him 
on March 3d, having the pleasure of meeting at his house 
the Count Bossi, whose acquaintance with the ground had 
been the means of introducing the ruins to the attention 
of Mr. Pullan, to whom and to his friend Mr. C. Heath 
Wilson, we are indebted for such information concerning 
them as we have hitherto possessed. 

It was arranged that for facilitating my operations I 
should be quartered on the curate of the village of Montar- 
saio, on the Marquis's estate and within a few miles of the 
eastern termination of the wall. The Marquis placed at my 
disposal his head game-keeper, to whose intimate knowl- 
edge of the forest in which the ruins are I owe the easy 
and speedy accomplishment of my commission. The game- 
keeper was instructed to devote to me his time, and provide 
me with whatever I required in the way of workmen or 
implements. 



8 4 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



We rode over the ground to make a preliminary exami- 
nation, and to ascertain, if possible, the relation of the ruins 
to the topography of the district, — as I imagined from the 
description of the game-keeper, whom I found a most in- 
telligent man, that the work in question must have been 
a defensive one, either of extreme antiquity or of late 
(Roman) date, the key to the solution being in the geology 
of the country ; but that in any case there was no question 
of the remains of a city. Our first ride was to the summit 
of Monte Leone, whence, as from the highest point of land 
in the district, the whole topography could be made out 
and a portion of the ruins seen. I found that the sum- 
mit itself was surrounded by a wall in ruin so complete 
that it was hardly possible to determine the breadth 
of the original construction. The stones, which were of 
all sizes under about four cubic feet, of irregular shape, 
and entirely unworked, were spread over the ground in a 
band forty feet wide, more or less, and formed a circle of 
about four hundred feet in diameter, drawn round the 
point of the mountain. The map I send, though not pre- 
sented as a correct indication of the details of the topog- 
raphy, is so in all essential particulars, and will give a 
clear idea of the position of this work in relation to the 
rest, and of the whole problem involved. 

It was clear from this bird's-eye view of the country 
that Monte Leone had once been a peninsula, and that the 
sea had — as we know from tradition to have been in part 
the case — once covered the plain where now stands Gros- 
seto, and that it had washed the western slopes of the 
whole range, the highest point of which was that where 
the citadel stood ; and I conjectured that the great lines 
of wall would be found to have extended from water 
defence to water defence, completing the circuit. The 
evidence on which this conjecture rests will be seen 
on reference to the map (which is corrected and en- 
larged from a geological map of the province, kindly 



ANCIENT WALLS ON MONTE LEONE. 85 



furnished me by the Secretary of the Commune at Gros- 
seto, Signor Bertani), the present plain, once evidently sub- 
merged, being tinted pale blue, the present water-courses 
deep blue. 

The next thing, then, was to trace the lines of wall 
and determine their character. They run, in great part, 
through impenetrable thickets, and even on foot it was im- 
possible to follow their course throughout ; but this was by 
no means necessary. We went to the eastern termination, 
which is in a ravine that in the rainy season forms the 
bed of a torrent. Here a single wall starts from the north 
bank, but after a few yards it divides into two, one wall 
running due north a short distance, the other northwest, 
and then both, turning nearly westward, run with a varying 
interval to the northernmost slopes of the mountain mass, 
terminating in a complete dispersion of the stones near the 
alluvial deposit of the Bruna. The space between these 
two walls varies up to half a mile, as nearly as I could 
judge, having no means of measuring accurately. 

These walls are composed of stone in its natural state and 
evidently collected on the spot, as it corresponds exactly 
with the stone of the torrent-beds which cross or approach 
them. I found one portion only where the original width 
was preserved, and there it measured about ten feet; 
and from the mass of the stone (an excavation to the foun- 
dation uncovering about five feet of perpendicular wall still 
standing) I conclude the walls to have been about ten feet 
high at the least, possibly fifteen. There is no such order 
in the masonry as Mr. Pullan supposed, stones of all sizes 
being found in the faces and in the centre of the wall, the 
largest weighing about two tons by the estimate of the 
game-keeper, and measuring about 6x6x3 feet. There 
was no careful facing of the stones, and there was no at- 
tempt to fill up the inter-spaces of the larger ones with 
small stones fitted to them, as in Pelasgic or Etruscan 
work. 



86 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



On examining the ground on the east side of the ravine, 
I found, as the game-keeper had informed me, that there 
was no trace of the wall, but observed two good reasons 
why it should be wanting, — one in the nature of the 
ground, which was comparatively destitute of surface stone, 
and the other in the arable nature of the soil, which is 
mostly now, and was all, according to tradition, once under 
cultivation ; so that stone was not only more difficult to 
obtain in such quantities as are employed on the west side 
of the ravine, but if formed into a wall would long ago 
have been dispersed by the processes of agriculture. On 
the west agriculture has been impossible, as the soil is 
untillable from its rockiness, and is covered by a wood 
of centuries' growth, probably the successor of an imme- 
morial and primeval forest. As the wall to the west of the 
ravine is of too great importance not to have been the 
serious work of a large tribe, consisting as it does of about 
eight miles of a double line such as I have described, or 
about sixteen miles in all of wall, with a minimum section 
of one hundred square feet, we are perfectly justified in 
concluding that it was carried out by the construction of 
some similar work on the east side, either in earth, stone, 
or wood ; but in either case this continuation would long 
since have disappeared, so that its absence does not 
militate against my conclusions, — which were that this 
was a work of defence, constructed by some party of im- 
migrants by sea, which landed on the shore of Monte 
Leone, and defended itself in this way against a more 
barbarous people on the mainland. 

That the epoch of this settlement was very remote, coin- 
ciding with the entire submersion of the plain, is indicated 
by the fact that the wall extends from the alluvium on one 
side towards and nearly to that on the other side of the 
ancient isthmus of Monte Leone, and that as a defence it 
would have been useless if it could have been turned by 
land on either side, as it might have been in any historical 



ANCIENT WALLS ON MONTE LEONE. 8/ 



times ; while on the ancient sea-shore there is nowhere any 
indication of a flanking work. 

That the people who inhabited the main land were 
more barbarous is made probable by the fact that such 
walls, which would have yielded to the simplest siege 
engineering, were allowed to be completed by an invad- 
ing force, and were considered sufficient for defence ; and 
by the consideration that any higher civilization would 
have possessed the means of turning all these defences by 
shipping. Furthermore, the ruins of Rusellae, unmistak- 
ably a Pelasgic town, stand on a hill inside the enclosure ; 
and the wall would have been an absurdity if Rusellae 
already existed ; while, if constructed by the Pelasgi, it 
would have been more complete in its structure, and would 
not have been in such complete ruin, since the walls of 
Rusellae are in excellent preservation. But the Pelasgi 
were the first European people to whom we have any right 
to attribute scientific wall-structure, or who developed the 
arts of civilization to a point at which their results obtain 
a permanent character and identificability. The presence 
of a Pelasgic city behind this line of defence, therefore, 
proves its priority of construction even if its structure did 
not, and gives it an antiquity consistent with my hypothe- 
sis that it originally ran from water to water. 

The examination of the ruins by excavation gives no 
result to shake this conclusion. I excavated the citadel, 
which is clearly contemporary, to the bare rock in two 
places, and found nothing but fragments of the rudest pot- 
tery, and these greatly corroded by action of moisture, — a 
double indication of great antiquity. No trace of any habi- 
tation exists within the enclosure except the ruins of a 
mediaeval convent on one of the peaks,— no traces of brick 
or collections of domestic debris. At several points within 
the enclosure are isolated remains of sections of walls 
similar to the enclosing, but these I conclude, from exami- 
nation of one of them, to mark the site of cemeteries. 



88 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



That which I examined I found to be composed of isolated 
heaps of rough stone, apparently surrounded by a wall, but 
all in such utter dispersal that it was impossible absolutely 
to determine. I opened the best preserved mound to the 
bottom, but found only fragments of rude and corroded pot- 
tery ; yet about a foot from the top I came upon a frag- 
ment of pottery of a decorative character, apparently early 
Etruscan, if we can distinguish that from Pelasgic. The 
extreme antiquity evident in every indication decided me 
that any further quest was useless ; the more so as the 
mounds were heaped up on a rocky soil, and had sunk 
into it, so that it was impossible, except by the indications 
of pottery, etc., to know when we were at the bottom of the 
tumulus. 

Another point demonstrating the antiquity of the re- 
mains is the entire absence of any local name or tradi- 
tion connected with them. If they had been as recent 
as the Roman conquest, there must have been a name by 
which to identify them. I was informed that there were 
some vestiges of construction in the valley about midway 
between the walls and Paganico, commonly known as the 
Bagnarolo, though nobody knew why ; and on investigating 
them I found in fact, not far from a large spring, the sub- 
struction of a building evidently a small bath ; and as frag- 
ments of tiles and bricks of imperial fabrication are found 
scattered over a field a quarter of a mile away, and as a 
bronze coin of Augustus found there was brought us, it 
was clear that a villa had stood there in the imperial 
epoch, of which the bath had formed an appendage. But as 
it now is surrounded by forest, and has evidently been in 
ruins for centuries, — the substruction of the villa, standing 
on arable land, having utterly disappeared, — the fact that 
the name still clings to the locality makes it in the highest 
degree improbable that this much more important work, if 
of post Roman date, could have been so completely lost to 
legend as it is. I have never known a case in which ruins 



ANCIENT WALLS ON MONTE LEONE. 89 



even two thousand years old had lost all traditional recog- 
nition, in appellation or legend. 

Having arrived at the conclusion I have stated, I judged 
my mission concluded, and that I was not justified in spend- 
ing more of the Institute's funds in amplifying evidence 
already as clear as the nature of the case admitted ; and, 
satisfied that any further investigation by excavation was 
entirely useless, I returned to Grosseto, having been at 
Montarsaio a week only. I was invited to continue exca- 
vation at Rusellae, and the Secretary, Bertani, had obtained 
the necessary permission ; but I did not consider myself 
justified in beginning a work which might become very 
serious and important, without the authorization of the 
Institute, though I had expended only a small part of the 
funds in my hands. That the expense was so small is due 
to the kindness of Marquis Salviati Corsi and the advantage 
of the guidance of his keeper through the intricacies of this 
vast forest ; and to the great interest of the Marquis in the 
investigation I owe my being placed in a position to pursue 
it in comfort and even with great pleasure, and I take the 
opportunity to express thus publicly my obligations to him, 
and to thank Mr. Pullan for having asked the Marquis to 
extend to me a permission already accorded to himself. 

I found photographic illustration impracticable from 
want of definite features and recognizable construction, as 
it was only by the continuance and plan of the remains that 
they could be distinguished from a chance heaping up of 
stones to clear the land, such as one sees continually on 
rocky land that has been reclaimed. 

If I might suggest an attribution of the ruins at Monte 
Leone, I would do so, tentatively rather than confidently 
however, with the conjecture that they mark a colony of 
the Umbri. Pliny speaks of the Umbro, the modern 
Ombrone, the river which runs to the east of Monte Leone, 
as " navigiorum capax, et ab eo tractus Umbriae." Dennis, 
in his "Cities and Cemeteries of Etrusia" (Vol. II. p. 235, 



90 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



second edition), gives the citation, adding that " Cluver 
(II. p. 474) thinks, from Pliny's mention of it [the Om- 
brone], that it gave its name to the Umbrians ; but Mtiller 
(Etrusk. Einl. 2. 12), on the contrary, considers it to have 
received its name from that ancient people, and interprets 
Pliny as meaning that a district on the river was called 
Umbria." Is it not possible that this settlement, large 
enough for a considerable principality, may be accounted 
for according to Cluver's interpretation, and be the origi- 
nal settlement of the Umbri, of whom we only know that 
they lived in cities ? No other work of the kind being 
known in Italy, its extent, its location on the Umbro, and 
its being in fact the only ancient indicated site on the 
Umbro, and unmistakably, as I think I have shown, an- 
terior to the Pelasgi, the indications are rather in favor of 
this conjecture than against it. I submit the problem to 
the judgment of more experienced archaeologists. 

Yours respectfully, 

W. J. Stillman. 

Florence, March 20, 1880. 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL NOTES 
GREEK SHORES. 
I. 



By JOSEPH THACHER CLARKE. 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 

I. 



k HE wanderer who approaches the lands which the 



- 1 - ancient Greeks ennobled by their civilization by way 
of the Danube, that great natural highway from Central 
Europe to the East, passes many traces of the extended 
Roman Empire before reaching the most remote Hellenic 
colonies. It would appear that Rome was destined to 
be in every way the first medium between Greek life 
and its regeneration in modern times. That powerful 
nation of subjugators and lawgivers covered Hungary, 
Servia, and Bulgaria with their works of civil and 




a 



POSEIDON, FROM A VASE. 




94 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



military engineering; the maps of Southern Germany, 
Austria, and Turkey under Roman dominion show the 
banks of the Danube dotted with their settlements. The 
Latin and sometimes the Greek names of over fourscore 
towns upon the river are handed down by the historians 
of the empire and by inscriptions. The situation of these 
can almost always be determined, — indeed, their modern 
names are often directly derived from the Latin; but in 
the majority of cases little more than the position, and 
the fact that at these stations such and such portions of 
the well-regulated Roman army or fleet were quartered, is 
known concerning them. 

Had the Danube been navigable up to Vindelicia or 
Germania Magna from its mouth, or even from points of 
its lower course nearer and more readily accessible to 
Rome than those transalpine provinces, it would have 
been of incalculable importance to the empire ; but the 
difficulties and dangers of the stream between Komorn 
and Stranting have only in part been overcome by gigan- 
tic works of modern engineering, — the blasting of the 
Strudel and Wirbel near Grein, and the partial regulation 
of the many beds which its rushing waters have furrowed 
between Linz and Gonyo. As it was, the Roman stations 
upon its banks were too distant and difficult of approach 
from Italy ever to be much more than military posts in 
a foreign land. 

Ratisbon — Castra Regina, whence Regensburg — was 
as important as any of them, and boasted of an oracle of 
local fame and a garrison of three legions. Founded by 
prominent Roman families, it was early the seat of a com- 
merce down the stream, this being the highest point at 
which the river is generally navigable. This commerce 
continued to increase long after the life of the state 
which founded it, until, at the time of its greatest profit 
and extension, it received a death-blow by the discovery 
of the sea-route to India, which made a revolution in 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



95 



all mercantile transit connected, however remotely, with 
the Black Sea. The Roman settlement here was upon 
both sides of the river, as to-day Ratisbon and Stadt- 
am-Hof; but in its lower course the Danube was, with 
the exception of the few years during which Dacia was 
under Roman dominion, the very boundary of the empire, 
and ancient towns were exclusively upon its right bank. 
The remains of Roman work which are here and there 
unearthed are generally too fragmentary to be of value; 
they seldom amount to more than a mosaic pavement or 
the foundation walls of a public bath. All such discover- 
ies are, however, diligently published by the many local 
societies. 

A few ancient fortifications and subterranean passages 
are visible at Ofen, — the fortress Aquincum, by which the 
emperors held the wide-spreading Hungarian lowlands in 
subjugation, — but the most interesting Roman construc- 
tional works are not found until the mighty stream breaks 
through the range of Transylvanian Alps which forms the 
natural barrier between the Turks and remaining Europe. 
The highway which Rome was obliged to maintain in con- 
nection with the colonies beyond these mountains, Panno- 
nia and Dacia, — a road especially necessary because the 
cataracts of Islatz and Jachtalia render communication by 
water almost impossible, — had followed the course of the 
river from Singidunum at the mouth of the Save. The 
little island opposite Belgrade is still called Sigin by the 
inhabitants. When this road came to the rocky range it 
entered the Kazan, one of the grandest passes of Europe ; 
its continuation here, along the side of upright cliffs, was 
a mighty undertaking, planned as early as the time of Ti- 
berius. The work was not, however, begun at that time, 
owing to the extreme difficulties of its execution ; nor 
could any progress be expected during the feeble rule 
of Domitian, although that cruel emperor greatly needed 
a secure communication with the provinces of the 



9 6 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



lower Danube, especially on his hurried return to the 
luxurious delights of Rome after his disgraceful Dacian 
peace. The long-planned highroad was imperatively ne- 
cessary before the opening of Trajan's carefully prepared 
Dacian campaigns; and Trajan, whose taste for the im- 
posing architectural magnificence of his time is so evident 
in less remote parts of the empire, left in its construction 
a memorial of his reign which can never be obliterated. 
On the face of the cliff, which often rises perpendicularly 
from the water's edge, a gallery road was partly built and 
partly excavated through the mountains where the upright 
sides offered no foothold along great distances of the 
river's course. 

A ledge-way, seldom broader than two metres, is hewn 
into the rock, and this was eked out by a wooden platform, 
built upon brackets and overhanging the water. The 
sockets for the ends of the supporting beams are visible 
in the cliff, just above the highest mark of spring freshets ; 
they may be traced for kilometres, neatly cut at regular in- 
tervals. At the narrowest point of this contraction of the 
stream, — a width given by Austrian surveys as 1 10 metres, 
— there is cut in the face of the cliff the well-known tablet, 
with the inscription commemorative of the completion of the 
road, dating it in the third consulate of the emperor, 100 A. D. 
The macadamized chaussee upon the opposite bank, which 
has cost the Austrian Government so much labor and ex- 
pense, offers a striking example of the superiority of mod- 
ern engineering construction, a superiority arising almost 
entirely from the many means now available which were 
unknown to the ancients. The natural difficulties offered 
by the Servian shore seem greater than those of the 
left bank; but the Romans were obliged to build their 
road upon their own southern side of the river. The 
stream could be crossed by a fixed bridge only at some 
distance below the pass. Two bridges of boats, repre- 
sented upon Trajan's Column, were thrown across the 



4 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 97 

Danube during the Dacian campaigns, one of them in 
the pass itself at Taliata, probably the present Columbina, 
a place naturally fitted by the width and current of the 
river for the anchoring of pontoons. But a fixed bridge, 
expensive as the experiment must subsequently have 
proved, was imperative for the success of Trajan's vast 
plans. The pontoons were useless at times when the 
stream was frozen or became impassable from masses of 
floating ice. 

It is impossible to explain the building of a fixed 
bridge on other grounds than the fear that the Dacian 
colony might without it be cut off from the mother coun- 
try and exposed to a concerted and overwhelming attack 
of the barbarians. A few miles below the town of Fetislam 
the site of the structure is still marked by the remains 
of buttresses upon either bank, by the foundations of 
flanking towers, and by the crumbling stones of sixteen 
of the river piers, which may be seen at exceptionally low 
water. The position chosen for the bridge was in every 
respect admirable. It was the first spot after the river 
leaves the mountain defile where the plains on either side 
allowed the foundation of a commanding town, Egeta, 
and afforded space for such a mustering of the passing 
armies as would assure regular and orderly advance, and 
prevent the great bodies of troops and their cumbrous 
accompaniments from becoming blocked on the bridge- 
way or landings. It is also the highest part of the course 
of the Danube to which vessels can ascend from the 
mouth; the Iron Gate is to-day an almost insuperable 
obstacle to the commerce upon the river, and in some 
seasons is entirely impassable by the lightest craft. Egeta 
is especially mentioned as a station of the Roman fleet 
of the lower Danube, which was there at the nearest 
possible point to Rome. The land at this spot was well 
adapted to the building of the bridge; the stream had 
but just left the mountains, and its course was fixed ; it had 

7 



9 8 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



not yet descended into the swamps of the country below, 
where the banks — a broad expanse of marshes — are sub- 
ject to annual inundations, and the many channels of the 
stream to continual shifting. The bed was here suffi- 
ciently broad, however, to form a sand-spit in the centre, 
exposed at low-water mark, and of great assistance to the 
primitive pier builders. The width from bank to bank at 
this point is 1130 metres, very well agreeing with the 
measure of 3570 Roman feet given by Dio Cassius in his 
account of the bridge, — a description which, from the 
writer's official position as consul and legate in Upper 
Pannonia, was likely to be correct. The river was nowhere 
over six metres deep, while, only a short distance above 
this point, the depth exceeds ten times that sounding. 
The piers could be much more easily founded upon the 
gravelly bed here than upon the rocks of the mountainous 
upper course. The chief force of the stream could be 
shifted, with the assistance of the spit, from side to side 
of the broad bed by moving the sand-shoal in the desired 
direction by means of dams and breakwaters, increasing 
it upon one side and turning the tearing current upon the 
other. To cross the expanse, more than two thirds of an 
English mile, twenty piers of masonry were necessary, 
supporting a bridge-way of timber-framing. The founda- 
tion was effected, after the force of the water had been 
diminished, by driving piles and placing upon them a 
coffer-dam (fcipco-iov) , stated by Tzetzes to have been one 
hundred and twenty feet long and eighty feet wide, dimen- 
sions somewhat greater than those of the masonry of the 
imposed piers. 

In the winter of 1858 the waters of the Danube sank 
to such an exceptionally low level that a survey and 
examination of the remains were undertaken by the Aus- 
trian Government. The piles were found to have been 
of oak wood, encased, as deep as it was possible to 
excavate between them, by a cement. The ruins of the 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



99 



masonry were so irregular that the exact plan and dimen- 
sions of the piers could not be accurately determined ; but 
from the representation on Trajan's Column it seems evident 
that their profile was pointed. The masses measured by 
the Austrians vary from fourteen to fifteen metres broad, 
and from twenty-two to twenty-three metres long ; the piers 
were built on centres 53.82 metres apart, the actual opening 
apparently having been 34.85 metres. The stumps show a 
facing of quarried stone with a filling of rubble work. The 
height of these piers is unanimously stated by ancient writers 
as one hundred and fifty feet, exclusive of the foundations. 
This seems excessive, but perhaps is not impossible. The 
wooden bridge-way was to be protected against attacks, 
especially of fire, from vessels passing below. The Romans 
were accustomed to high piers : Trajan's bridge over the 
Tormes had piers one hundred and four feet high, and 
those of the bridge over the Tagus are stated by various 
authorities as one hundred and fifty and one hundred and 
seventy feet high. The banks upon either side of the 
Danube at this point would not have required much 
terracing to reach this elevation; perhaps this may be 
regarded as one additional advantage of the site. The 
bridge-way, of a triple timber arch and bracings, which 
rested upon these piers of masonry, is represented not 
only on Trajan's triumphal column in Rome, but also 
upon a commemorative medal of no excessive rarity. 




REPRESENTATION OF THE FIXED BRIDGE OVER THE DANUBE 
UPON TRAJAN'S COLUMN, FROM A CAST. 



100 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



It is incomprehensible how 
prominent archaeologists could 
have supposed the bridge-way to 
have been formed by masonry 
arches. The entire bridge was 
completed between the two Da- 
cian campaigns ; its building 
could have occupied only two 
seasons. The completion of the 
wooden framework of the bridge 
in so short a time is wonderful 
enough, and is to be explained 
only by the admirable distri- 
bution of the work among a 
multitude of workmen. It is 
contrary to common-sense to 
suppose that all the Roman le- 
gions that were ever assembled 
in the lands of the Danube could 
collect the materials and arch 
the enormous masses of masonry 
that would be necessary to span 
twenty-one openings of thirty- 
five metres each, — not taking 
into consideration the difficulties 
of putting up so many centrings 
in so short a time. All the arches 
would have to be under way at 
once, in order to finish them and 
the remaining support and super- 
structure of the bridge in so 
short a time ; it would not have 
been possible to move one or two 
centrings from pier to pier as the 
arches were successively com- 
pleted, and this economy of labor and material, usual in 




NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



IOI 



the construction of stone bridges, is not compatible with 
the limited number of working-days in two summers. But 
it seems needless to waste arguments upon the matter, in 
view of the adequate illustrations of a wooden bridge-way 
upon the triumphal column and the coins. These repre- 
sentations naturally are not architecturally exact; they 
merely exhibit the main characteristics of the masonry 
and carpentry work, exaggerating and omitting according 
to the manner of all painters of vases, cutters of coin-dies, 
and painters of wall decorations who attempt to represent 
buildings. The buildings shown in the frescoes of Pompeii 
bear much the same relation to ancient temples and dwell- 
ing-houses as the relief upon Trajan's Column bears to 
the bridge over the Danube. The details are either left 
out entirely, as is the case with all the cross-bracings and 
the continuation of some of the principal beams over the 
piers ; or are disproportionate in size, as the immense 
balustrades bordering each side of the road-way, which is 
shown in na'fve perspective as from above ; yet the char- 
acter of the structure is expressed in so clear a manner 
that the chief lines of a restoration are certain. The 
timber arches could easily have been prepared simulta- 
neously upon the river-banks from the abundant material 
of neighboring forests ; they were framed of comparatively 
small beams, which could be easily transported to their 
position. 

The type of bridge adopted by Trajan is one in com- 
mon use at the present day. In our own country are sev- 
eral wooden bridges of wide span erected upon piers 
of masonry, which well illustrate the constructive princi- 
ples adopted by Trajan. The bridge of three segmental 
arches, 59.4 metres span, over Mill Creek near Cincin- 
nati, the well-known arch over the Connecticut River 
at Bellows Falls, 53.3 metres span, and above all that 
magnificent specimen of engineering carpentry, the Cas- 
cade Bridge of the Erie Railroad, with its span of 83.8 



102 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



metres, may serve as examples. Smaller European bridges 
— that of the Zarskoje-Selo Railroad near St. Petersburg, 
or that over the Murg at Rastadt — are still better parallels 
of the method of construction which was employed nearly 
eighteen centuries ago for the bridge over the Danube. 
It would appear from the coins that, when the bridge was 
finished, a triumphal arch was erected, according to the 
custom of the Romans after the completion of works of 
this importance. 

Perhaps no ruler ever built so many bridges as Trajan. 
Besides this gigantic structure and the two pontoon bridges 
over the Danube, the celebrated bridge over the Rhine at 
Mayence, those over the Metaurus and Aufidus in Italy, 
and over the Tamega, the Tormes, and the Tagus in Spain, 
as well as a number of others, date from his reign. Tra- 
jan's two great delights — delights characteristic of the 
Roman temper — were carrying on wars of conquest and 
building colossal structures, generally of greater engineer- 
ing than architectural excellence. Both of these were 
expressed in the construction of the fixed bridge over the 
Danube, and it is more than a mere coincidence that its 
erection marked the very culminating point of Roman do- 
minion. Trajan's bridges, and this one more than any of 
the others, made his reign proverbial in later times for con- 
structive magnificence. He was certainly the greatest of the 
imperial builders. It was not mere flattery which stamped 
on the coin commemorating the building of the bridge the 
verdict of the Roman people, — Optimo Principi. 

The architect of the bridge was Apollodorus of Damas- 
cus, the designer of Trajan's Forum with its triumphal 
arches and column, and of the Odeum and 
Gymnasium. It is interesting that a frag- 
ment of one of these structures — a bas- 
relief representing the architect, a man in 
Greek costume, handing to the seated em- 
peror a roll of drawings — is preserved by 




NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



103 



a happy chance upon the upper part of Constantine's tri- 
umphal arch. During the reign of Trajan, Apollodorus 
seems to have executed the chief monuments suggested by 
the emperor's lively interest in his art; but his unsparing 
criticism of Hadrian's architectural attempts was very un- 
favorably received by that imperial amateur, and led to the 
exile and subsequent execution of the master. Hadrian 
destroyed the great bridge which had cost his predecessor 
so much labor and expense, avowedly because the advanc- 
ing hordes of barbarians threatened the colonies upon the 
right bank of the Danube, and this bridge would serve 
them as a welcome transit. It may, however, be possible 
that the jealous emperor was the more willing to make this 
sacrifice because he was aware that he thus destroyed one of 
the greatest works of his predecessor and of Apollodorus, 
who had fallen into so signal disfavor. Other accounts 
of Hadrian's regard for the achievements of Trajan's reign 
lend some weight to this uncharitable supposition. As it 
was, the structure was in use less than two decades, the 
piers of masonry alone being left as a memorial of its 
builders. Constantine the Great made a hasty restoration 
of the wooden bridge-way upon the partially overthrown 
piers, when he crossed the river on his expedition against 
the Goths. A tower of his construction is said to have stood 
at Egeta ; the statement that he built a bridge upon piers 
at Oescus seems to be an error that had its origin in this 
reconstruction, especially as no remains of bridge-piers or 
buttresses exist at the site supposed to be identical with 
Oescus or at any other point of the river-bank. Trajan's 
bridge below the pass of the Iron Gate was thus the only 
fixed bridge that has ever spanned the lower Danube. 
We learn from Procopius that Apollodorus wrote a mono- 
graph upon his bridge, — a work now lost; a few frag- 
ments of it, which point to the manner of construction 
above explained, are to be found in Tzetzes. Only one of 
the professional writings of the architect has been pre- 



104 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



served, and this is upon a subject of little general interest; 
namely, engines of war. 

The architectural literature of antiquity must have been 
extensive, as it seems to have been customary for ancient 
architects to explain in an essay the principles which guided 
them in planning an edifice, and the peculiar methods of 
construction which were necessary to accomplish its erec- 
tion. It is an incalculable loss that not one of these spe- 
cial descriptions of the buildings of antiquity has been 
preserved. To possess the original treatises concerning 
the Parthenon, the Temple of Ephesus, and Trajan's Forum, 
by Ictinus, Hermogenes, and Apollodorus would be an 
advantage to architectural science of which it is difficult 
to form an estimate. How much that is slowly, labori- 
ously, and after all imperfectly gained from the ruins 
would lie clearly before us in these writings ! How many 
conceptions, of which modern architects are absolutely 
ignorant, might be added to our knowledge ! From 
the shattered stones it is difficult fully to understand 
the optical refinements universally practised in antiquity. 
The very fact of the existence of the curvatures in Doric 
temples has been known but a few years. How recent and 
how incomplete is our knowledge of the powerful part taken 
by color in ancient architecture ! We have but a vague 
idea of its different use in the Doric and Ionic styles of 
building. The practical treatment of stone-work in the 
fifth and fourth centuries B. C, as judged by its results, has 
not been approached in excellence with all the appliances 
of modern science. The loss of these Greek treatises upon 
special buildings and technical subjects cannot be too 
much deplored. 

Before leaving the range of the Transylvanian Moun- 
tains, where the rich veins of metal and coal were the 
wealth of the Dacians long before the Roman conquest, it 
is interesting to notice the mines which the Romans began 
to work at various sites, shafts cut by hand-tools in 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



105 



the hardest rock, the sides of the passage being as straight 
and smooth as though built of quarried and polished stone. 
The formation is so hard that it would not now pay to 
attack it with blasting. Many weary lives must have been 
spent in these mines, which were worked almost entirely 
by criminals and political prisoners condemned to them (ad 
metalla damnati) at the time when Trajan attempted forci- 
bly to populate these Danubian provinces. 

In the broad-stretching plains of the river's lower course 
there are but few traces of antiquity. The Ister was on the 
very outskirts of the ancient world. A few remains of 
ramparts and the foundations of walls and fortifications at 
Silistria and Chernavoda, which once afforded a feeble pro- 
tection against the savage tribes beyond its stream, and in 
the barren and untenable Dobrudscha, are almost all that is 
left of Roman occupation. The Greeks seldom penetrated 
to its banks before Trajan led so many of the inhabitants 
of the Roman province Achaia across his great bridge 
that their language became a common dialect of Dacian 
cities. Homer knew that the river had its source in the 
West, but it was always a stream of the Hyperboreans to 
the older Greeks ; down to quite a late period their geog- 
raphers conceived that it emptied in part into the Adriatic, 
by which roundabout way one version of the legend re- 
lated the return of the Argonauts from Colchis to Greece. 
In the third and fourth Christian centuries, vast hordes 
of nomadic Goths rushed from the plains watered by the 
stream to overthrow the remaining fanes and public monu- 
ments of Greece and to extinguish the last flicker of Hel- 
lenic refinement in the unfortunate land. 

In an isolated earlier instance the Danube had been 
of momentous importance to Greek history. The power 
of the Persians, which so soon afterwards threatened 
Greek freedom and culture with annihilation, was once 
on its banks entirely at the mercy of the Ionians. The 
great attack of Asiatic despotism upon European liberty 



106 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



and civilization had been planned in its main aspects 
when Darius, at a date towards the end of the sixth 
century not accurately to be determined, crossed the 
Danube to advance with his army into the wild Scythian 
territory, on a most unwise expedition against that elusive 
people. The king had marched with a mighty land- 
force through Thrace. His fleet of six hundred ships, 
furnished and led by Asiatic Greeks, had been ordered 
to sail from the Bosporus to the Danube, and, after 
advancing two days' voyage up from the mouth, to build 
with their vessels a pontoon bridge across the stream. 
This was done at the site of the later city and fortress of 
Noviodunum, between the present villages of Isaktchi and 
Tultcha, — the last point of the river's course where its 
waters, augmented by those of the Pruth, are not yet 
divided into the many arms by which it empties into the 
sea. Greek artisans built the bridge here, as they had a 
short time before built that over the Bosporus. They 
were architects and constructors for the Persians, as they 
were in later times for their Roman conquerors. Man- 
drocles and Apollodorus built the world-famed bridges 
for the passage of the foreign armies which threatened 
or had enslaved their countrymen. Though the chief de- 
signers of the pontoon bridges of Darius over the Danube 
and of Xerxes over the Hellespont are not known by name, 
it is certain that they were Greeks. Arrian describes the 
method of building these bridges of boats: the vessels 
were floated down the stream from a point somewhat 
above that to be crossed ; they were guided stern-foremost 
to their destined position, where they were anchored by 
throwing out a conical basket of woven osiers, filled with 
stones and attached by the circular rim, that seems to have 
served as a fluke and caught readily upon the bottom, which 
at the part of the Danube where these bridges were 
set affords exceedingly good holding-ground. Upon the 
boats, thus arranged and fixed in position, connecting 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



107 



beams were laid, upon which boards were placed crosswise, 
and the passage-way was secured by a balustrade. 

The pontoon bridge built by Darius could not greatly have 
differed from those represented upon Trajan's Column. 
Over it the immense Persian army advanced into the pres- 
ent Bessarabia. From the original instruction of Darius to 
the Greeks to break down the bridge and follow him upon 
his expedition with the men of the ships, it is evident that it 
was his intention to return to Persia by marching entirely 
around the Black Sea, of the dimensions of which the 
vaguest ideas must have been prevalent. Such was the an- 
cient understanding of geographical distances and of the 
nature of the country to be traversed, — the barren steppes 
and swamps of Russia and the mountains of Caucasus. It 
was only upon the advice of one of the Greek generals that 
the bridge was suffered to remain after the first crossing 
of the army, and Darius was even then confident of success 
if he was not repulsed in two months. The story of the 
cord of sixty knots, significant of the days to be waited by 
the Greeks, the return of the retreating Persian army in 
the night to the partially destroyed bridge, and the efforts 
of the stentorian Egyptian herald to attract the attention of 
Histiaeus the Milesian is told by Herodotus with his usual 
simplicity and with exceptionally vivid interest. Enticed 
and harassed by the nomadic Scythians, who, retreating 
to the north with their wives and children upon their 
wagon-homes, avoided an open encounter and systemat- 
ically wasted the country behind them, the army in vain 
attempted to shelter itself by throwing up fortifications by 
the river Oarus. It has been recently thought that these 
defences may be recognized in some breastworks near the 
town of Saratow, a spot which would thus mark the extreme 
advance of the Persians. Finally forced to a retreat, pur- 
sued by the whole Scythian nation, the fate of the Persian 
army depended upon the bridge left in charge of the 
Greeks. Detained beyond the sixty days fixed for the 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL IXSTITUTE. 



return, the retreating army was preceded by a body of 
Scythians, who endeavored to persuade the Greeks to 
destroy the bridge and recover their independence by the 
consequent extermination of the Persians, — an oppor- 
tunity which was lost through the personal selfishness of 
some of the Ionic governors, who supported Darius that 
they might maintain their own unpopular rule. The en- 
treaties of Miltiades, the future victor of Marathon, were 
in vain. But the temporary diversion of the Persian force 
from rapidly advancing on Greece was sufficient to render 
this foolish expedition indirectly advantageous to Hellenic 
civilization, and to make the future victories of Greece 
over Persia more easy than they would have been without 
this exhausting delay. 

Noviodunum was a place of some importance down to 
the latest ages of the empire ; it was the station of a 
Roman legion, and the fortifications were restored and 
extended by Justinian. The river was for a second time 
bridged by pontoons at this spot during the expedition 
of Yalens, the younger brother of V alentinian, against the 
Goths in 369 A.D. The Sanctum Ostium, the principal 
southern arm of the Delta, is now the Holy Mouth of 
St. George. Had the extensive works of engineering 
which, largely from political reasons, have recently been 
devoted to the Sulina outlet been applied to this arm, it 
would be, as of old, the most important as well as the 
broadest outflow of the mighty river. 

It was this branch which was chosen for the exit of our 
little vessel ; for although the course of the St. George amon^ 
the marshes is so tortuous as to be nearly twice as long as 
the Sulina arm, it yet saves thirty-five kilometres of the 
dreaded sea-coast. The land encroaches at the estuary, 
where sand-banks, dangerous to approaching vessels, are 
formed ; but the fear which ancient geographers enter- 
tained that the Black Sea would, little by little, be entirely 
silted up by the alluvium of the many streams which 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



109 



empty into it, and become so shallow as to render 
marine commerce totally impracticable, seems ground- 
less. 

It must not be supposed, from this rather amusing 
misconception, that the Greeks, who have ever been a 
nation of sailors, were not familiar with the Black Sea 
from their earliest history. Even in mythical ages it was 
the scene of famous adventures. Past this Delta sailed 
Orestes and Pylades to the Scythians, whose shrine of 
Artemis was tended by the daughter of the great Aga- 
memnon. The shores of the Tauric Chersonese and of 
Colchis were familiar to the Greeks in their oldest 
legends. Though told with great poetical imagination 
and license, these tales have a circumstantiality which 
attests, if not their absolute truth, at least the full acquain- 
tance of the relators with the marked peculiarities of the sea 
and its shores. To consider the kernel of such accounts 
as groundless fable is to attribute unlikely inventions 
to the Greeks. It seems not improbable that many of 
the scenes of the Odyssey were drawn from the nature 
of these shores. Wonders peculiar alone to the Pontus 
were related by Homer, who was familiar with the legends 
of the Argonauts and of Heracles. Circe was the sister and 
Medea was the daughter of Colchian Aietes. The Black 
Sea was early the scene of predatory expeditions for the 
valuable products of its coast lands ; Jason was professedly 
in pursuit of gold. It was the practice of the inhabitants of 
Colchis, down to a late historical period, to stretch fleeces 
of wool across the beds of the torrents which fall from the 
mountains of Caucasus, with their rich veins of ore, and 
by this means to entangle the particles of gold washed 
down by the stream, — a mode of collecting the precious 
metal still in vogue in the rivers of the African Gold 
Coast. As the advance of civilization rendered a settled 
commerce possible, the products of these lands were 
naturally an attraction for countless Greek vessels. The 



1 10 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



broad-spreading plains which border the Black Sea are by 
nature complementary to the sunny rocks of the Pelopon- 
nesus and the Aegean Islands. Greek vessels have gone to 
and fro between them in all ages, bringing the oil and wine 
of the southern climate in return for the grain and flax of 
the north. The cold and damp which could not ripen the 
grape and the olive rendered the southern products more 
necessary and greater luxuries; Lower Russia is still, as 
in the earliest centuries of Greek civilization, the great 
market for Greek wines. Even before the time of Herod- 
otus, the passion of the inhabitants for the juice of the 
Greek grape was proverbial: to drink in the Scythian 
manner was to take the wine unmixed with water, contrary 
to the Hellenic custom, which has maintained itself until 
this day. 

The valleys of the Danube and the Dnieper supply in turn 
the ports of the eastern Mediterranean with grain, — a com- 
merce which has been firmly established since the time of 
the Persian wars. These streams were held by the Greeks 
as two of the three greatest and most beneficent rivers of the 
world. It was for good reason that so wise a statesman 
as Demosthenes regarded the security of commerce with 
these grain-producing lands as one of the most imperative 
demands of Greek policy. It is a concentration of this 
commerce which has so rapidly raised Odessa to its posi- 
tion as one of the chief European ports. The Pontic 
salted fish and meats were highly esteemed by Herodo- 
tus and Plato, by Aristophanes and Polybius. The an- 
cient fisheries, especially those upon the southern shores 
of the sea, were of an importance fully corresponding to 
the great source of revenue now derived from the trade 
in tunnies and caviare. The advantages of this fishery 
were so great that the inhabitants of certain districts 
abandoned all other means of livelihood and devoted 
themselves entirely to fishing for tunnies, although the 
soil of their neighborhood was fertile and the adjacent 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



Ill 



mountains rich in wood and in mineral products. The 
part of the fish nearest the tail was particularly esteemed. 
Athenaeus, who is very diffuse in the expression of his 
gastronomic delight upon this subject, relates that a jar 
of Pontic fish sold in his time for three hundred drach- 
mas, which may be compared with the exorbitant price 
that the caviare procured at the mouth of the Danube 
still commands. 

Beside its independent commercial importance, the Eux- 
ine was the highway for the convoys which brought the 
products of the far East to Europe in the most remote 
antiquity. This transit trade was so great that its influ- 
ence, as before said, gave even to distant Ratisbon the 
character of an emporium. According to the accounts of 
ancient writers, the drugs, the silks, and the precious stones 
of India were brought by a seven days' caravan-journey 
to the Icarus, a confluent of the Oxus, in preference to 
the long and dangerous sea-voyage by way of the Red 
Sea. By this river they were floated to the Caspian 
Sea, across which they were carried to the mouth of the 
Kyros, and then up that river to a landing place, only four 
days' journey by land from the Black Sea. This was a 
difficult transit; but the desire of possessing the products 
of India overcame all obstacles. 

So extended a commerce, direct and transitory, necessarily 
led to the early foundation of colonial towns. But the chill 
dampness of the Pontic winds, the severity of the northern 
winters, which rendered the open-air life of the palaestra 
and agora impossible, prevented these towns, however 
wealthy, from becoming more than populous mercantile 
stations. Nothing was more indispensable to the Greeks 
than warmth and a blaze of light. Where the laurel and 
myrtle, so dear from religious significance, could not sup- 
port the extremes of the climate, — as on the shores of the 
Euxine, where all attempts to cultivate these plants failed, 
— - the national characteristics of the Greeks could not be 



112 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



developed. It very reasonably appeared terrible to those 
who had lived under the soft charms of Ionian skies, in the 
dry and warm Attic plain, or on the sunny islands of the 
Aegean, that the largest rivers, and even parts of the great 
salt Pontus itself, should be covered with ice. This was 
the more surprising to the ancients as it was commonly 
supposed that salt water could not freeze. When return- 
ing merchants brought assurances of the contrary in the 
rigorous climate of the northern Pontic districts, where the 
harbor of Odessa is yearly blocked with ice, the Greek 
geographers regarded it as a sign of the most excessive 
inclemency. They sought to explain the existence of ice 
by the great number of streams which discharge fresh 
water into the Black Sea, which, they argued, must float 
upon the salt because of its greater specific lightness. 
This sophism is adopted by Ovid in one of his epistles 
from the Pontus : — 

Adde quod hie clause- miscentur flumina Ponto, 
Vimque fretiwi imdto perdit ab amne suam. 

Innatat unda freto dulcis, leviorque marina est, 
Quae proprium mixto de sale pondus habet. 

Scythian snow was proverbial. The Pontic towns were 
often regarded as places of banishment, an antique Siberia, 
as it were. Scythia naturally seemed the very border of 
the habitable world. Its inhabitants were for the most 
part regarded with a fear and dislike handed down to late 
centuries. Even when the Genoese established their fac- 
tories upon the banks of the sea, the land was possessed 
by the wildest hordes, — barbarians who caused Christen- 
dom to tremble as they advanced from the dreaded Pon- 
tus. In antiquity the Scythians overran Asia Minor ; even 
Egypt was not beyond their wide-sweeping excursions, 
and Psammetichus, powerful as he was, was obliged to 
prevail on them to retire by means of gifts and entreaties. 
There was always a mixed population of such aborigines 



NOTES OAT GREEK SHORES. 



"3 



and colonists in the settlements, like that described by 
Ovid at Tomi. 

From the mouth of St. George a low, sandy ridge, in- 
tervening between Lake Raselm or Ramsin and the sea, 
stretches back almost directly to the west. The present 
Portitsco opening leads to the lake, to the site of the once 
flourishing and populous Istropolis. The entrance of 
ancient trading vessels of light draught to the Danube 
may generally have been here effected ; there is connection 
between the lake and the arm of St. George. The danger- 
ous shoals off the larger mouths would be avoided by this 
passage, and the distance from the Bosporus to the shelter 
of the river considerably diminished. Though there may 
be no literary support for the supposition of such a course 
of commerce, it seems impossible otherwise to explain 
the existence of so large a town upon a lake which offered 
no advantages beyond that of a sheltered entrance to the 
river, and now, when nautical changes have rendered its 
shallow waters impracticable for trading vessels, is almost 
entirely deserted. The very name, Istropolis, seems to 
point to this conclusion. The first town upon the sea- 
coast south of the Danube is Kostenjeh, in the name of 
which may be traced the ancient Constantiniana, given it 
in honor of the sister of Constantine the Great. A few 
stones, showing traces of Roman workmanship, lie in its 
streets, but nothing remains of architectural importance. 
It is a mistake of the last edition of Dr. Smith's " Ancient 
Atlas" to mark Constantiniana as identical with Tomi, once 
the capital of the Roman province, and famous from hav- 
ing been the place of Ovid's banishment. The remains of 
Tomi are eight or ten kilometres from Kostenjeh, at a 
hamlet still called Tomisvar or Fegni Pangola. It was 
celebrated as the spot where Medea upon her flight dis- 
membered her brother, whose limbs were collected and 
here buried by Aietes. The entire coast has the barren 
and uncultivated character which Ovid describes in lament- 

8 



U4 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



ing his hard lot of exile, — the earth long covered with 
snow, the fields producing neither fruit nor pleasant herbs, 
no oaks upon the hills or willows upon the shores, the 
soil untilled and not desired as property by any man. 
The poet found as little good in the waters as on the land ; 
and though he wrote his " Halieuticon " upon the fisher of 
the Pontus, he saw the waters ever deserted by the sun and 
lashed by perpetual storms. His only consolation during 
the miserable decade of his life spent upon its shores was 
found in literary work, and in acquiring the language of 
the inhabitants so perfectly as to be able to compose a 
poem in it to the honor of the ruler by whom he was 
sent from his native land. Ovid found his grave and 
funeral monument in Tomi. 

As we proceeded southward, a storm detained our small 
vessel for days under Cape Caliacra, the ancient Tiristis, a 
cliff which rises abruptly from the water to a tableland 
sixty miles above the sea. 

The town Tirissa, or Tetrisias, upon the plateau which 
extends from this point to the north and west, was called 
also "A/cpa, from the precipitous ascent. Of this town no 
recognizable traces were to be found, the promontory now 
being covered by the weather-beaten ruins of a settlement, 
evidently of the early Byzantine epoch. Much of the for- 
tress which formerly commanded the town still stands ; its 
dark walls, rising high above the white Turkish lighthouse, 
forming a conspicuous landmark to the mariner who passes 
this almost inaccessible coast often in fear and trembling. 
A fortress stood here in antiquity as well as in Christian 
ages. Tiristis was used as a magazine by Lysimachus. 
The ancient Odessos, the present Varna, was one of the 
most wealthy and populous Greek settlements upon the 
Euxine. Extensive as the ancient town must have been, 
it has left absolutely no architectural remains. It would 
be interesting here to determine, through an examination 
of the earth by a few trial-pits, whether a canal for vessels 



A T OTES ON GREEK SHORES. 115 

ever connected the almost unsheltered roadstead known 
as the port of Varna with the Lake of Deona, — a body 
of water of ample depth, separated from the sea by 
a narrow strip of land, over which it now discharges its 
surplus. Odessos, like almost all the towns upon this 
coast, was originally a colony of the Milesians. Miletus 
was the head of the commercial undertakings in this sea. 
After the foundation of the first Milesian colony on the 
Pontus, Sinope, the number of their stations increased 
rapidly, and there were few secure ports or even tolerable 
landing-places not taken possession of by that active 
people. 

The Phoenicians, the first of ancient traders and sea- 
farers, and the rough and practical Carians, who in great 
measure kept step with them, had opened communica- 
tion with the barbarous tribes dwelling upon the shores 
of the Pontus. Both these nations had settlements upon 
the northern islands of the Aegean, and trading-posts 
upon the European and Asiatic coasts of the Euxine 
itself. The Carians were the more direct predecessors of 
the Greek colonists. Miletus stood upon Carian land, and 
at the time of Homer was under the sovereignty of that 
people. The sons of the Greek colonial city were strongly 
tinged with their blood. Herodotus relates that the settlers, 
not having brought Greek women with them, took as wives 
the daughters of the Carians whom they had killed in 
combat upon their arrival. Prominent Phoenician families 
dwelt also in Miletus until a late historical period, and the 
city had in the earliest times been a Cretan settlement. 
Phoenicians, Carians, and Cretans, the three great maritime 
nations of remote antiquity, were thus intermingled in the 
city: it is no wonder that Miletus, with its four harbors, 
should become the mistress of the ancient seas, and send 
colonists upon the track of the earliest explorers. The 
practical knowledge of this foreign people was early seized 
upon by the enterprising Greek population, who made 



Il6 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



their city the home of the mercantile and geographical 
science of antiquity. 

The number of the commercial stations of the Milesians 
multiplied until Miletus, itself a colony, was said to have 
founded eighty towns. It has been remarked that colonies 
are always most inclined to send out new settlements in their 
turn. Their citizens are not so firmly attached to the soil as 
those of the mother country, and the desire for travel and 
commercial undertaking is transmitted from father to son. 
The growth of the Milesian towns upon the Black Sea 
depended upon the advantages which their situation offered 
to maritime pursuits. Thus it seems natural that, few 
as are by nature the accessible points of the shore > the 
present coast-settlements should be almost always in the 
exact position chosen by the ancients. Sites thus built and 
rebuilt by different races can retain no trace of ancient 
structures, — unsubstantial as these, from their destination, 
are likely to have been. The Ionic commercial towns of 
the Black Sea, however wealthy and frequented, could 
have had but little similarity to the Doric colonies, with 
their imposing monumental constructions, which lined the 
coasts of Sicily and Magna Graecia. While Metapontum, 
Poseidonia, Acragas, and Selinus still show remains of 
temples which may be compared to the ruins of the 
Athenian Acropolis, Varna is entirely a modern town, 
with no reminiscence of its importance in antiquity. 
Mesembria, farther to the south, was founded by Greek 
auxiliaries at the time of the return of Darius from his 
expedition against the Scythians; a small village upon 
the site still preserves the original name. Sizopoli is a 
better representative of Apollonia, a colony of the Milesi- 
ans, founded half a century before Darius. Its name was 
derived from a temple and a colossal statue of Apollo, a 
celebrated work of Calamis, carried to Rome by Lucullus. 
Apollonia, known also in antiquity as £ft)£o7ro\t?, was so 
flourishing at one period that it was able to found a colony 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



of its own upon the opposite peninsula of Anchiale, where 
a few coins have recently been found. Midia, still retain- 
ing in its name some trace of the ancient Salmydessus, is 
the principal town upon the long and exceedingly danger- 
ous coast which, for nearly one hundred and fifty kilo- 
metres, stretches in precipitous cliffs to the Bosporus. 
The name Salmydessus was first applied to the whole 
extent of the land from the promontory Thynias, the 
present Iniada, to the Cyanean Rocks, but by later writers 
restricted to the chief city. Its inhabitants were especially 
notorious as cruel wreckers, which may have done much 
to attach to the sea which beats upon their inhospitable 
shore its original name Hovtos aijevos ; theirs were the 
cliffs, dreaded of old by Greek sailors, — 

rpa^eta ttovtov "%a\/xvSr}(T(Tta yvaOos 
ix0po^€vo<; vavTaicri, firjTpvia j/e<w. 

The traces of fires kindled to mislead mariners who were 
eagerly seeking the opening of the Bosporus still blacken 
prominent points of the shore. The entrance to the nar- 
row strait from the Black Sea is blind in thick weather ; 
even now, when every assistance possible is rendered by 
lights, beacons, and whitewashed cliffs, it is bewildering and 
dangerous to sailing vessels. Deceived by false signals, 
driven upon the rocky shore by the prevalent northern 
winds and currents, many ancient ships were yearly 
wrecked upon this coast, their cargoes plundered, and the 
surviving mariners doomed to slavery or death. Midia, 
situated among the rocks and shoals of Cape Serveh, is of 
particularly dangerous approach. 

It is not strange that Greek mariners, though they 
ventured boldly, have in all ages had a great dread 
of this sea. The ancient saying, " He has come from 
the midst of the Pontus," was expressively applied to 
one who, almost beyond hope, had escaped from fearful 
danger. Its immense expanse, without sheltering projec- 



Il8 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



tions of the land and without islands, its rugged and steep 
or sandy and swampy coasts, which extend for great 
distances without refuge, made it a strange and fearful 
sheet of water for boatmen accustomed to the nooks 
and favorable anchoring places abounding in every 
part of the Aegean. The waters of the Black Sea are 
rough even in quiet seasons, being disturbed by the 
irregular and conflicting winds which descend from the 
high Caucasian Mountains, and from the ranges of Haemus 
and Olympus, or which rush from the broad valley of the 
Lower Danube and, above all, from the barren and bleak 
Russian steppes to the more rarefied atmosphere of south- 
ern latitudes. Its shores are often veiled in dense fogs. 
The currents and counter-currents of the many rivers 
which tend to the great outlet of the Bosporus, being 
more or less influenced by every wind, are exceedingly 
variable. All these dangers and difficulties are especially 
felt by small craft, incapable of standing out to sea, such 
as were the vessels of the ancient Greeks, whose maritime 
qualities were developed upon the Aegean and influenced 
by its peculiarly favorable character. Boatmen of Tenedos 
and Samos incredulously smiled at our mention of the 
Mavpr) QaXaa-aa, and held it improbable that so small a 
craft as the " Dorian " could have accomplished the voyage 
from the Danube to the Bosporus even in the best of 
seasons. And, indeed, after experiencing evils which were 
nearly as tragical as those to which Arrian and his com- 
panions were exposed upon this wicked sea, we could fully 
appreciate the joy of all ancient sailors in reaching the 
shelter of the strait, throwing the anchor behind the Cya- 
nean Rocks, in a spot which must have protected many 
light-draft Phoenician and Greek coasters from the dis- 
tressing roll without. With such delight must Orestes and 
Iphigenia with the statue of Artemis, and Jason and Medea 
with the Golden Fleece, have welcomed their escape from 
the stormy waste. 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



II 9 



The Cyanean Rocks, the Symplegades of the Argonauts, 
never could have been a nautical danger. It is, however, not 
strange that the traditions of timid seafarers of primitive 
times should have attached themselves to these promi- 
nent and isolated masses just at the portal of the Euxine. 
The sea, which is deep close to the rocks, beats upon 
them in northern storms with incredible fury ; and the dark 
blue-gray stones do indeed seem to move, and even to rise 
and fall, as the flood dashes upon them and retires, expos- 
ing them far below the water-line. The thick fogs and the 
crashing noise of the waves, which the ancient poets asso- 
ciated with the Symplegades, are still characteristic of them. 
The Greeks were accustomed to ascend to their summits and 
offer sacrifice, propitiating Poseidon before venturing upon 
the wild and dark expanse of the Euxine stretching beyond. 
Darius chose this point for his first view of the sea, which 
from here is truly, as Herodotus says, well worth seeing. 
There are few signs of work upon the rocks themselves ; 
the summits are not at all levelled or terraced, and the 
ascent, by means of the natural clefts and seams of the 
volcanic conglomerate, requires a sure foot. Conspicuous 
upon the highest peak, perhaps eighteen or twenty metres 
above the water, is an altar of marble, 1.38 metres high, 
and .83 of a metre in diameter. The surface of this monu- 
ment is ghostly white, like the columns of Sunium, which 
are in a position similarly exposed to the rude breath of 
salt winds. The block is known as the Column of Pompey, 
though it is no column, and in all probability is not of the 
time of Pompey. It seems likely, however, from the reports 
of the earliest travellers, that a shaft once stood here, a 
humble namesake of the great Alexandrian column, pos- 
sibly rolled into the sea since the time of Tournefort. The 
altar-block which has inherited its name could not origin- 
ally have stood in its present situation, balanced upon the 
rough surface of the summit. Traces of iron clamps and 
dowels of a former base are visible upon the marble. It 



120 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



must be supposed either that the lower part has disap- 
peared from the rocks, without leaving a trace of its posi- 
tion ; or, as appears more probable, that this circular drum 
was brought as an incomplete fragment from some former 
site. Dionysius of Byzantium relates that the Romans 
erected an altar to Apollo upon the Cyanean Rocks : this 




THE ALTAR UPON CYANEAN ROCKS. 



block may be the remains of the altar, and the laurel 
garlands which encircle it lend weight to this supposi- 
tion. Its erection in the present situation, if it is to be 
ascribed to antiquity at all, must have been at a late time, 
and could not have been preceded by extensive structures 
of any kind. The projecting ornaments of the altar, the 
bucraniae and garlands, are much defaced. The inscrip- 
tion can no longer be deciphered : in its place are scratched 
the names of sailors whom curiosity has prompted to climb 
this landmark at the mouth of the Bosporus. 

It was upon the cape at this end of the strait that Jason 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



121 




^0 



consecrated to the Gods the anchor of the 
Argo, taken from Cyzicus, which had served 
so well in the dangers of the Black Sea. 
The anchor has always been the symbol of 
Pontic cities. The spot marked by Jason 
as a sanctuary had the good fortune to find coin of the 
favor in the eyes of Byzantine Christians, 
and its religious significance is still perpetuated by Islamism. 
Farther to the south, upon the European shore, stands the 
cliff of King Phineus, — the city of vultures, TviroiroXt^, — 
where the Argonauts, Zetes and Calais, destroyed the Har- 
pies sent as avengers of the mutilation of their sister Cleo- 
patra. The spot is a fitting dwelling for the prophetic 
son of Phoenician Agenor, who is to a certain degree, 
doubtless, symbolical of the Phoenician pilots who pre- 
ceded and led the Greeks to the sea which broadens 
beyond this portal of the strait. 

It is difficult to conceive of a greater natural change 
than that from the rugged and frightful shores of the 
Black Sea to the wonderful garden of the Bosporus, the 
delight of all ages and races. The waters of the stream 
wind like a salt river between the hills of Thrace and 
Bithynia. It was with reason that the ancients regarded 
the Euxine as the mother of waters, receiving as it does 
the watershed of more than two thirds of Europe and of 
a large tract of Asia, and overflowing with a powerful 
current, which is felt through the Bosporus, Propontis, 
and Hellespont to the headlands of Samos and Sunium, 
and still further south. At every point on the shores of 
the Bosporus we are reminded of the legends and life of 
antiquity. 

The strait is contracted between the castles of Ana- 
toli and Roumili Hissar to a width of only 550 metres ; 
its depth is over 100 metres, twice that of the maxi- 
mum sounding in the English Channel between Dover 
and Calais. The current is here exceedingly strong, as is 



122 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



natural from the great body of water which rushes from 
the high level of the Black Sea. At this point Mandro- 
cles, one of those great Samian architects and engineers 
who constructed so many of the wonders of the ancient 
world, built the bridge over which Darius and his army 
passed in the expedition through Thrace to Scythia. An 
anchorage in such deep waters was impossible, even a few 
metres from the shore. It must be assumed that the 
boats which formed the bridge were kept in position only 
by being bound to each other by cordage and perhaps by 
chains. With the rapidity of the water, which often flows 
eight or nine kilometres an hour, the strain upon boats 
thus attached must have been enormous. The stream a 
little below this point, where the width of the Bosporus 
is still very considerable, is known to mariners as the 
Devil's Current. 

The combined advantages of a river-harbor and a sea- 
port gave importance to Byzantium in the earliest ages 
of Greek settlement. At the Seraglio Point, which here 
severs the current of the Bosporus and directs one part 
of its waters into the Golden Horn, landed the "fording 
cow" which gave the name to the strait, — Io, restlessly 
attempting to escape from the gad-fly sent by Hera. 
Upon the same spot landed the leaders of the Megarian 
emigrants who first stepped upon the land which was to 
become the greatest of Greek colonies and finally, in 
Christian centuries, the death-bed of Greek learning. The 
fragments of antiquity remaining at Constantinople are 
few and meagre. They have most of them been often 
described. 

An attempt to discover any fragment of architectural 
remains bearing the easily recognizable forms of the Greek 
Doric style was absolutely without success. 

Opposite the mighty city, the commercial and political 
capital of southeastern Europe and much of Asia, stands 
the small and insignificant Kadi Koi, — the original Greek 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



123 




colony of Chalcedon, famed for its temple and oracle of 
Apollo, second only to those of Delphi. The inhabitants 
were termed " blind " by the Delphic oracle, famed as the 
founder of colonies, for overlooking the sig- 
nal advantages of the opposite shore and the 
Golden Horn, with a lack of geographical 
insight contrasting strongly with the wis- 
dom of Delphi/ Far beyond Kadi Koi rises 
the snow-covered peak of the Bithynian , 
Olympus. Sailing rapidly through the Pro- tium. 
pontis, vestibule between the Mediterranean and the Black 
Sea, we made only a short stoppage off Seliori, the ancient 
Selymbria whence traces of the enormous wall, seventy or 
eighty kilometres long, may be followed across the country 
to the little promontory of Kalionjik, that second ancient 
Scylla upon the horrible coast of Salmydessus. This wall, 
built by the Emperor Anastasius to protect the entire pen- 
insula eastward to the Bosporus and Byzantium, remains as 
a monument to the utter military inefficiency of the Byzan- 
tine Empire at the commencement of the sixth Christian 
century. A natural parallel to the strait of the Bosporus with 
its castles of Roumili and Anatoli Hissar is the narrowest 
part of the Hellespont with those of Abydos and Sestos. 
As Darius passed the Bosporus over pontoons at the 
former point, so did Xerxes carry the might of the Persian 
nation across the Hellespont at the latter. His bridge 
of boats was doubtless constructed much like that built 
by Mandrocles. The description of it given by Herodo- 
tus is not very clear. An anchorage, entirely impossible 
in the Bosporus, could perhaps be secured, as he says, 
in some part of the Hellespont. The five times greater 
width of the latter strait would otherwise have rendered 
the bridge impossible ; for the cordage of white flax and 
papyrus, which bound the separate vessels together, would 
have been insufficient to withstand the leverage of a cur- 
rent which is always strong, and which, with returning 



124 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



northerly winds after a southern gale, equals that of the 
Bosporus. 

To build a pontoon bridge across the Hellespont would 
even now be hazardous : it is not surprising that the ele- 
ments would not permit either of the structures of Xerxes 
long to stand. The Hellespont hardly deserved the extreme 
displeasure of the king because of the failure of the first 
attempt, and might have been spared the insulting speech, 
the three hundred lashes, the sunken fetters, and the 
branding, which are reported to have been inflicted upon 
its waters. The royal decapitation of the first contractors 
because of their ill success was far more serious than 
such a harmless display of irritability. The castles of 
Europe and Asia upon the Hellespont, like those upon 
the Bosporus, were founded by the energetic Mahomet the 
Conqueror. The castle of Asia is upon a low, projecting 
tongue of land, Nagara Burun, at a partial turn of the 
strait. It is from this point that Leander must have 
nightly crossed to visit the beautiful priestess of Aphro- 
dite, the current here offering some slight advantages 
to the swimmer. The remains, crumbling to a formless 
mass, which are pointed out near Sestos as the tower of 
Hero, belong to an entirely different age from that as- 
signed to the story of the two lovers. The width of the 
Hellespont is given by Pliny as seven stadia, or 1167 
metres ; but this is far too narrow. It scales upon the 
English admiralty charts as about three kilometres. The 
difficulties of Leander's passage are not, however, to be 
measured by the absolute distance between the two 
shores. The stream is swift and the waters are chill at all 
times of the year. The low average temperature of the 
Black Sea is but slightly raised in the Sea of Marmora; 
this surface warmth hardly affects the strait of the Dar- 
danelles, where the current mixes the waters of all depths 
together. All who have bathed in the Bay of Phalerum, or 
upon any eastern Mediterranean shore, know how cold these 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



125 



waters are in midsummer after being disturbed by a storm. 
The passage has been accomplished a number of times 
since the story of the loving youth of Abydos made it a 
celebrated feat; among others, by the writer, in a few 
minutes less than an hour. 

The hills of Abydos are beautiful, fertile, and rich in 
color, contrasting strongly with the poor and barren Euro- 
pean coast, — a clayey soil, lightly covered with sand. 
It is yet worthy of remark that most of those who have 
become celebrated by crossing this arm of the sea went 
from the richer to the poorer shore. This was the direc- 
tion of Leander, of Xerxes, and in later times of Soliman 
and the host of Mahometan conquerors. The army of Al- 
exander under Parmenio crossed, however, from Europe. 
So went also the fair and delicate Helle, who fell from 
the ram, which was carrying her from the dreaded sacrifice, 
into the waters called by her name. The Christian appel- 
lation, the Arm of St. George, is now well-nigh forgotten. 

Sestos and Abydos, always strong and fortified places, 
were often in arms against each other ; their contentions 
continually ravaged the fertile country along the course of 
the strait. Sestos was an especially important fortress, 
offering a stubborn resistance to the first Athenian fleet 
that appeared in the Hellespont, and serving as a mag- 
azine for the Persians, who here stored the tackling of 
their great pontoon bridge. The broadening stream sweeps 
into the Mediterranean, past the Trojan plain marked by 
the sand-castle Koum Kaleh, and by the tumuli which 
bear the name of Homeric heroes. 

The situation of these tumuli is certainly well chosen for 
an imposing effect. Placed upon the extremity of the 
cape, they may be seen by approaching vessels from afar, 
even from shadowy Lemnos, where Philoctetes lay in 
agony at the time of their erection. 

A light breeze in the cool gray of the first June morn- 
ing carried the " Dorian " from the low beach of Koum 



126 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 




PHRIXUS AND HELLE. FROM A VASE. 

Kaleh towards Imbros. But though the distance may 
easily be traversed in three hours with a fair wind, the 
boat was soon becalmed, and floated listlessly while the full 
force of the Dardanelles current swept it so far out to sea 
that we hardly reached the western extremity of Imbros at 
night-fall. Imbros, with its rocky and sterile hills rolling in 
a long range from end to end of the island, is said to be 
destitute of any traces of antique architecture. It had not 
an interesting or eventful history, following always the fate 
of its neighbors, and seldom taking any decisive part in the 
events which affected them. After the boat had proceeded 
a short distance from the island, the wind for a second time 
died out entirely. An absolute calm continued for two 
days and nights under the cloudless summer sky, — a phe- 
nomenon said not to be infrequent just before the advent 
of the Etesian winds. The gentle waves gradually subsided, 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



127 



until the surface of the sea became as a mirror. With the 
vertical sun lighting up the transparent waters, it is possible 
to see to a great depth, and watch the large fish and tortoi- 
ses moving listlessly below. The heat of the motionless at- 
mosphere gradually became intense. On the second day the 
air was like the breath of a furnace ; the sun was pitiless, and 
our eyes were burned by the reflection of its beams ; the 
shores of Imbros and Samothrace veiled their colors in 
hazy iridescence, and the pallor of extreme light and heat 
enveloped heaven and sea. It is soon seen why the Mediter- 
ranean is called by modern Greeks the "Aairpr) OaXaaaa 
in opposition to the Black Sea : the pale light and white 
water of those calm days brought the contrast very strongly 
to mind. 

The peak of Samothrace towers high to the sky, rising 
abruptly to an altitude given by the English admiralty 
charts as 1600 metres, — thirty feet less than an English 
mile. Steep cliffs turn the back of the island, as it were, to 
Imbros and to those who approach from the south. The 
shore is here inaccessible save at one or two points ; the 
mighty rocks above, furrowed by deep rents, are inhabited 
only by a species of wild goat, the skins of which are 
greatly prized by the islanders. This entire southern region 
is seldom visited, attracting only the most adventuresome 
hunter. Closed by this imposing wall from all the Archi- 
pelago save Thasos, the isolated island was a fit seat for 
such mysteries as those which once rendered it celebrated. 
Samothrace is the highest island of the Eastern Mediter- 
ranean ; its peak and that of holy Mount Athos rise like two 
grand natural altars, throning over the Thracian Sea, as 
though destined by nature for the religious significance which 
has been accorded to them in different ages. The island is 
visible for a great distance, appearing above the hilly ridge 
of Imbros, a conspicuous landmark to all who pass along 
the great highway of commerce from the west to the east ; 
but its shores offer no casual stopping-places, and it is gen- 



128 A R CHJE OL O GICA L INSTITUTE. 



erally viewed only thus from afar. It is without peculiar 
attractions, and its situation now makes it almost neglect- 
ed ; in antiquity it was visited mainly by those who sought 
the advantages of refuge and expiation accorded at its 
shrines, or were desirous of initiation into the rites of the 
Cabiri. Its situation, aside from the traffic which the for- 
mation of land and sea has led into such fixed courses in this 
part of the Mediterranean, its difficulty of access, the very 
danger of approach to its steep and unsheltered shores, — 
all so entirely separate it from the every-day intercourse of 
man that it is as completely out of the world as it is possible 
for any land to be which is so near populous continents and 
islands. This is readily understood by a comparison of 
Samothrace with the frequented little port of Tenedos, 
where the harbor is constantly crowded with crafts of all 
kinds, while the wharfs are busy with the bustle and 
hurry of trade, and the cafes frequented by the sailors of a 
hundred different ports. Samothrace at the level of the sea 
is little more than the base of the immense mountain-peak 
which rises abruptly from the waters. He who climbs the 
steep sides must enjoy an unequalled view from the bold 
summit. It was upon its topmost crag that Poseidon sat, 
surveying the heights of Ida, Troy, and the fleets before its 
coast. 

OuS' akaodKOTT Lr)V et^e KpaW evoo-ix^tov ' 
Kai yap 6 6avfid£wv rjcrro tttoK^ov re fxd\yjv re 
vij/ov i-rr aKporar^s Kopvcf)7]<s Idfxov v\r)€cro"r]<5 
Spr}LKLrj<; ' evOev yap e^atvero Tracra pXv *I$r}, 
<l>aiveTO 8e UpidfxoLO ttoAis kcu vrjes 'A^atwv. 
kv& dp oy e£ dAos efer iuv, eAeaipe 8' 'Axaioi;? 
Tpuxrlv 8ap,va/zej/ot>s, Ait 8e Kparepws evefxeaaa. 

AvTLKa 8' e£ opeos KaTe/^rJcrero 7rat7raXd evros 
Kpanrvd 7roo-i 7rpo/3i/3as * rpe/xe 8' ovpea fxaKpd kol v\r] 
Trocrcriv vir dOavdroLcn IIocraSaa>vos lovtos. 

The name " Thracian Samos " reminds one of the more 
southern island. The two highest mountain caps of the 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



129 



Aegean have so much similarity that it is easy to believe with 
Strabo that the name once designated such an elevation as 
the towering peak of either Samos, and that the adjective 
" Thracian " was given by the Greeks solely for distinction, 
although it had become incorporated into one word as early 
as the time of Herodotus. The stream of the Hellespont 
is almost entirely broken, north of its outflow, by the 
island Imbros, which lies like a bar across its upward 
course. The current moves only very slowly to the north- 
west upon the southern side of Samothrace. On the 
western extremity of the island it is more perceptible, and, 
uniting with a westerly movement of the waters upon the 
northern coast, has formed a spit of sand and gravel, which 
there projects, a strip of flat land of some little extent, 
enclosing two small salt lakes. Around this point, upon 
the northern coast, is the usual landing place of the island, 
the so-called Kamariotissa, — a settlement consisting of 
two or three low huts and a chapel. Here lie the few 
boats which keep up the necessary communication between 
Samothrace and the mainland, dragged up on the beach 
by means of a pulley and rollers. Few vessels touch here 
in, pursuit of traffic ; the entire lack of shelter almost pre- 
vents the approach of ships, and renders the stranding of 
the smaller craft inevitable, even in the most favorable 
seasons. Some fishing-vessels, however, were afloat, and 
the fixed ballast and iron keel of the " Dorian " preventing 
its being dragged ashore, our boat was anchored in their 
company. On two occasions, fearing the advent of the 
dreaded Etesian winds, the entire little fleet got under way 
in the middle of the night, flying around the point to the 
southern lee of the island. 

It is naturally the continual lament of the inhabitants of 
Samothrace that they have not a government sufficiently 
energetic to provide shipping with some slight shelter, 
though it were only a short straight mole at Kamario- 
tissa. The connection of the neighboring salt lakes 

9 



130 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



with the sea by a channel naturally suggests itself. An 
entrance of only one metre in depth would be sufficient 
for the most pressing need, and this would not be diffi- 
cult to effect. It is possible that some such connection 
existed in antiquity, although Pliny characterized Samo- 
thrace as insula importnosissima omnium. It can never 
be possible effectually to shelter large vessels upon its 
shores. 

The conformation of the island strongly reminds one of 
a flooded mountain-peak, and of the Greek legend, told by 
Diodorus, which imagined the Black Sea, formerly entirely 
enclosed as an island lake, swollen by the influx of the waters 
of the Danube, the Dnieper, and the Don, until it overflowed 
the land which intervened between it and the Mediter- 
ranean. It thus formed the Bosporus, the Propontis, and 
the Hellespont, and, bursting into the Thracian Sea, inun- 
dated the islands, which lost much coast-land by the rising 
waters. Hence it came that fishermen, casting their nets 
near the shore in after ages, drew up capitals and other 
fragments of the buildings which had stood on the inundated 
plains. Upon the pebbly coast, washed high by the waves 
of Etesian storms, lie here and there heaps of charcoal, — 
the only article of importance exported from Samothrace, 
— awaiting the boats which carry it to the main-land and to 
islands more destitute of wood. The only village is far in- 
land, placed in security upon two sides of a steep and narrow 
valley, probably because of pirates who, from the time of 
the Mithridatic wars — when they pillaged the island and 
escaped with a booty valued at a thousand talents — until the 
last struggle for Greek independence, seldom have allowed 
the island long repose. 

The situation of almost all island towns of the Aegean 
has been chosen with reference to ready protection 
against marauding bands. They generally stand upon 
some steep elevation. The massive walls of their churches 
and monasteries permit them to serve as strongholds in 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



the emergency of an attack. The houses of the present 
village of Samothrace, which has no other appellation 
than " Chora," are of the most common stone of the island, 
a tertiary trachyte, of rich, warm color, though a miserably 
coarse building material. The walls are seldom plastered 
within, never without. The ceiling beams are simply 
worked with the axe from rough branches, agreeably to the 
law of Lycurgus ; upon these lies a thick layer of earth, 
pressed down after every rain-storm by rollers of stone, 
which are often of marble from the ruins of the ancient 
town below. These roofs of earth have lately found favor 
in northern climates, especially in Sweden and Norway. 
They were apparently not in use in ancient times in Greece 
itself, but were very common in Asia Minor, where they still 
are prevalent in certain districts. They are mentioned by 
Strabo as found in Persia. The common houses of Meso- 
potamian cities were generally thus roofed. It is curious 
that the cylinders of stone which lay upon them as rollers 
have often been falsely supposed fragments of columnar 
supports, which have been introduced into restorations 
upon this misunderstanding. The houses of the village 
of Samothrace seldom consist of more than the four en- 
closure walls, sometimes without even windows, the light 
entering through the ever open door. So steep is the side 
of the hill upon which they stand, that the floor of one is 
generally upon the level of the roof next below it. In winter, 
nearly all the inhabitants are collected here ; in summer, 
many are scattered over the island in isolated huts, tend- 
ing herds of goats and preparing their white, chalk-like 
cheese. 

The male population was stated by one of the best informed 
villagers as between fifteen hundred and two thousand souls, 
— a rough estimate, which seemed exaggerated. The pres- 
ent inhabitants, excepting the lowest class of shepherds, 
are said to have largely immigrated to the island from Al- 
bania after the devastations of the last war of independence, 



132 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



which nearly depopulated Samothrace. The conquest of 
the island by the Turks in 1457 was still more frightful. The 
richest of the inhabitants were removed to Constantinople, 
the youngest and healthiest sold as slaves in neighboring 
ports. Only the meanest were then left to till the soil for 
the Turkish guard. Xot a person was permitted to remain 
whose ability or beauty would have a marketable value in 
Turkish bazaars ; only very few were sly enough to escape 
the officials by long concealment in the almost inaccessible 
ravines of the mountains above. It is not surprising that 
modern races of Greeks, who have been repeatedly sub- 
jected to such treatment and to a constant oppression by 
their half -civilized conquerors, have finally become so de- 
generate as to be too frequently a sad caricature of their 
ancestors. 

The ancient town of Samothrace was upon the coast, its 
foundation evidently having taken place at a time of greatest 
security from sudden assaults. As one climbs up the dry, 
brown cliffs and down the fertile beds of water-courses, 
the white marble ruins peer from among the vegetation, 
particularly dense for Greek soil, which covers the site. 
To the scrub-oaks which grow upon every part of the island 
there are here added maple and plane trees, thickly inter- 
laced with many varieties of twining vines. The advance 
upon untrodden paths is almost impossible. The town lay 
upon a well-watered slope, a spur of the mountain-peak 
now called Agios Georgios. Its extent of about twenty 
hectares is enclosed by gigantic walls to the west and south, 
and bounded on the east by a high hilly ridge. The enclos- 
ing wall is one of the most remarkable specimens of rough 
Greek masonry known. More than a kilometre long, it is 
constructed of immense polygonal blocks of the stone which 
forms the mountain-ridge, laid together without mortar and 
without smaller wedge-blocks in the interstices. In many 
places it is so entirely overgrown with trees and shrubs that 
its course can hardly be followed. The masonry is very 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



133 



coarse and irregular, and the wall itself is of such varying size 
that it is impossible to decide its original dimensions in any- 
place. It could not have been much less than six metres 
high ; the stones are in several places in position to nearly 
that height. The thickness of its course varies from two to 
four metres. The plan is very irregular, care having been 
taken to prevent its running too far in a straight line ; and 
it is broken by angles which allowed the defenders behind 
its ramparts to attack the side as well as the front of an 
advancing enemy. The breaks, as is usual in such cases, 
exposed the right flank of the attack, which was not 
protected by the shield. The only gate which still remains 
complete is spanned by horizontal projecting courses of 
regular height. The covering of at least one of the two 
other openings which can be distinguished seems to have 
been of similar structure. 

There is now no manner of ascertaining at what 
period of the island s history this gigantic wall was built. 
It may possibly have been even before the introduction 
of the mysteries. This is the decided opinion of Conze. 
Such a massive wall of rough materials might have 
stood as a memorial of gray antiquity in the midst of a 
town which had received a new impulse of life, in the same 
manner as so many town walls, constructed during the 
Middle Ages, still encircle or are built into flourishing 
European cities. The more pretentious later buildings 
of Samothrace outside of these walls may well be com- 
pared to the boulevards and rings of modern capitals, with 
their immense architectural works, which would survive 
the utter obliteration of the crowded streets of private 
dwellings lying within the fortifications of former centuries. 
Samothrace had a venerable legendary history preceding 
its importance as the shrine of the Cabirian mysteries. 
But, on the other hand, it is almost inconceivable that 
such gigantic structures as these walls could have been 
built at this period on an island which, if bereft of the 



134 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



religious rites, could have had no more importance in 
antiquity than it has to-day ; which, from its position and 
inaccessibility, could never have had the commercial im- 
portance that in different ages has created populous 
cities on the barren islands of Delos and Syra ; which, 
from want of extended tracts of arable land, could never 
have supported a much greater agricultural population than 
that now existing upon it. It is not known at what date 
the Cabirian mysteries peculiar to Samothrace were in- 
stituted or introduced : a remote antiquity is not to be 
assumed from any of the inscriptions yet known which 
relate to them and to the initiations. Of the rites them- 
selves it is safe to say that absolutely nothing is defi- 
nitely known. 

The sea-beach before the town is now straight and with- 
out shelter. It must have cost much labor to excavate the 
small port of the town, and to build the protecting mole 
which existed in antiquity. A few rocks of the latter are 
visible upon the sand beneath the water. The port, a circular 
basin of perhaps one hundred metres in diameter, is now 
overgrown with rushes and swamp-plants, which mark its 
extent. It is entirely closed by the high bank of pebbles 
thrown up by the waves. 

Considering the dependence of the island upon boats 
for its only communication with the rest of the world, — 
a communication rendered particularly necessary for the 
comparatively dense population by poor soil and insuffi- 
cient productivity, — it is not surprising that the in- 
habitants of Samothrace obtained a reputation for admir- 
able seamanship. It was a vessel of this island which 
at the battle of Salamis redeemed the character of the 
Ionian allies of Xerxes for bravery, and confuted the cal- 
umnies of the Phoenician captains. Herodotus relates 
how the Persian monarch, from his high seat upon Mount 
Aegaleos, saw a Samothracian vessel run down and sink 
an Athenian ship. Being attacked in turn by a vessel of 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



135 



Aegina, the Samothracians saved themselves from sinking 
by jumping upon this latter craft, where they carried on 
the combat with the crew until they had obtained the 
mastery of it. The exploit cost the Phoenician slanderers 
their heads. 

The larger buildings of the later town were outside the 
walls, chiefly in a glen, which ascends the mountain and 
receives the waters of a small brook. The stream flows 
scantily in June, but is evidently swollen to a rushing 
torrent in the rainy season ; its inundations have covered 
a great part of the ruins with earth and have even 
rolled down large boulders from the mountain-side. The 
situation is beautiful, on the northern side of high 
mountains, which protect the verdure from the fierce 
blaze of a southern sun. It is only three or four 
hundred paces from the pebbly beach of a most beauti- 
ful sea ; it is cooled by the northern winds, and well 
watered during the long, dry summer. The ruins show 
the larger buildings to have been so closely crowded to- 
gether that modern conceptions of architectural compo- 
sition .would have been offended by their proximity. This 
was common in ancient times, however, and was especially 
natural in Samothrace, upon which mountainous island 
no road or passage broader than a bridle-path could ever be 
of use. The interposing of broad streets and bare rect- 
angular places between monuments is more in accordance 
with imperial Roman and particularly with modern ideas 
of grand display, — giving a cold and formal character, de- 
cidedly opposed to the more artistic and genial grouping 
of architectural masses peculiar to the Greek and Gothic 
styles. The two principal marble buildings of Samothrace, 
which can be understood from the overthrown remains, 
were of the time of the Diadochi, in architectural treat- 
ment being midway between Greek and Roman forms, as the 
civilization of that period was a similar intermediate stage. 
They were built of a stone which must have been brought 



136 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



by vessels, as the island itself produces no such material. 
It is of coarse grain and exceedingly friable, resembling the 
marbles of Marmora and Thasos, from which latter quarries 
it was probably derived. The more important edifice was a 
temple, probably used in connection with the rites of the 
mysteries. It presents but few peculiarities beyond a deep 
prostylos, developed somewhat at the expense of a bare and 
exposed cella. The door alone adds interesting details to 
our knowledge of Greek temple portals. 

It is not my present purpose to give a description 
of any of the buildings represented by the confused ruins 
of this town of Samothrace. Such an account, to have 
even a critical value, would lead too far, and would largely 
be a repetition of the official publication of the Austrian 
excavations. It is perhaps sufficient to mention some 
fragments of bronze, found during these investigations 



among the ruins of the marble temple, to which special 
attention has not been called, although they appear of 
peculiar architectural interest. 

They are beaten to the characteristic form of the so- 
called egg-and-dart moulding, and possibly served as part of 
the decoration of the door. May it not be conjectured 





BRONZE FRAGMENTS FOUND AT SAMOTHRACE. 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



137 



that the origin of this peculiar ornament is to be traced to 
the embossed metal work which is known to have played so 
great a part in the earliest architecture of Greece, and es- 
pecially of Asia Minor, whence so many ornamental forms 
were taken by the masters who developed the Greek styles ? 
The marked convexity of the egg-and-dart moulding, as 
well as of the bead astragal, seems to point to the principle 
of metallic reflection as influencing their origin. The form 
of the embossed metal ornament was retained in the work- 
ing of the stone when the metal was disused. This sup- 
position gains weight from the frequency of gilding upon 
these convex members in the fully developed stages of the 
Doric and Ionic styles : in this manner the original re- 
flection was again attained. 1 The architectural treat- 
ment of stone has been always more or less affected by 
the material which preceded it chronologically in construc- 
tion. It offers few peculiarities of texture from which 
characteristic stone forms result. This want of idiosyn- 
crasy in stone permitted the development of conven- 
tionalized members the forms of which were originally 
determined by the peculiar fibre of wood, such as the 
coffers of the pteroma or the Doric entablature, or by 
the malleability of metals, such as the minor decorative 
mouldings. 

The second marble building, standing close to the 
temple, owed its existence to the safety which the island 
offered as a refuge. It is attested by an inscription to 
have been the offering of Arsinoe. That Egyptian queen, 
the daughter of Ptolemy I. and Berenice, was first married 
to King Lysimachus, supplanting his former wife, Amas- 
tris, and becoming the mother of three children. These 

1 A division of polished metal work into partially globular bodies, each 
of which catches and throws back the light, is a well-known resource of the 
designer. It is only necessary to refer, for a striking illustration of the prin- 
ciple, to the bulbous mediaeval chalices and monstrances, such for instance 
as the cups of the recently discovered Ratisbon treasure. 



138 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



were adopted, because of their claims to succession, by her 
savage step-brother, Ptolemy Keraunos, who by most sacred 
oaths persuaded Arsinoe' to become his wife, — only to 
murder the two younger boys in her arms. It was then 
that she sought refuge upon the sacred island of Samo- 
thrace, where she remained until married to her own brother, 
Ptolemy Philadelphus, who raised her to the throne of 
Egypt. The former wife of that ruler, also named Arsinoe, 
enraged at the intimacy of her husband with one already 
so near by blood-relationship, entered into a conspiracy 
against him, the discovery of which caused her banishment. 
The daughter of Berenice seems to have borne in mind 
the protection which Samothrace had afforded her in time 
of need, and erected the circular building, of which the 
ruins lie scattered here among the bushes, literally not one 
stone being left upon another. The remoteness and inac- 
cessibility of the island, which had given to it its mystical 
character and made it the home of the Cabirian rites, also 
rendered it attractive as an asylum. It is interesting 
that the two principal buildings of Samothrace represent 
the two opportunities afforded by its physical character : 
the marble temple was sacred to the mysteries, the circular 
edifice was the offering of one who had sought refuge upon 
its shores. 

Arsinoe was not the only ruler who fled to Samothrace 
after the reverses of fortune. Ptolemy Physcon sought 
protection here when Egypt was taken by Antiochus 
Epiphanus ; and King Perseus, defeated at Pydna and 
despoiled of his kingdom, came to enact a new deed 
of horror upon its shores. He cruelly murdered his 
follower Evander, who had accompanied him to the island, 
when he saw that the Samothracians resented a pro- 
fanation of their sacred asylum by one who but a short 
time before had attempted to take the life of Eumenes 
upon the very threshold of the temple of Delphi. Here 
the unmanly king, who had boastingly proclaimed his glory 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



139 



as equal to that of the Great Alexander, surrendered, with 
childish tears and laments, to a Roman admiral, and was 
carried to Italy to grace a triumphal procession through 
the streets of Rome. 

The chief town of Samothrace, the scene of the Cabirian 
mysteries, is now deserted, being resorted to by the present 




inhabitants only as a quarry and a lime-kiln. As marble 
occurs elsewhere upon the island only in a small unopened 
ledge, the ruins were obliged to supply all the lime which 
was so freely used by the builders of the three mediaeval 
castles upon Samothrace, — one in the present inland 
village ; one upon the promontory, at the site of the 



140 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



ancient town ; and one farther east, upon the northern 
coast. 

With the advent of Christianity and the extinc- 
tion of the mysteries, Samothrace fell into that state of 
desolation which became the lot of so many of the 
Aegean islands after the Mithridatic wars. When, in the 
fourteenth century, the merchant princes of Genoa and 
Venice contended for the commerce of the East, the islands 
of the Thracian Sea again rose to considerable importance. 
They to a certain degree commanded the Hellespont, the 
entrance to Byzantium and the Euxine, which was still, 
as in Greek antiquity, one of the most frequented passages 
to India. After more than a thousand years of neglect, 
Samothrace flourished again under the Gattilusii, the 
princes of Lesbos, whose story is a worthy epilogue to 
the ancient history of the island. The Genoese had by the 
middle of the fourteenth century obtained the greater part 
of the commerce of the Black Sea, although the throne of 
the Byzantine Empire was held by Cantacuzenos with his 
Venetian alliance. Venice and Genoa often fought their 
battles in the capital of the East. Francesco Gattilusio, a 
merchant-noble of Genoa, came to Tenedos to trade, with 
several ships that were in effect men-of-war, so heavily 
were the merchant-vessels of the day armed against the 
pirates who infested the Archipelago. The attempt of 
John V. Paleologos to dethrone Cantacuzenos was favored 
by the Genoese state, and Gattilusio was easily enlisted to 
direct service by the promise of the Pretender's sister in 
marriage, with the Princedom of Lesbos as her dowry. 
The Princedom of Lesbos included the sovereignty of 
Lesbos, Tenedos, Ainos, and the four Thracian islands, — 
Lemnos, Imbros, Samothrace, and Thasos, — and appar- 
ently some points of the coast of the Troad. Gattilusio suc- 
ceeded in surprising Byzantium one stormy winter's night 
of 1354, and, afterwards, in clearing the northern Aegean 
of the pirates who had rendered traffic insecure. His 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



I 4 I 



family ruled the assigned princedom for more than a century. 
It was during this period that the three castles of Samo- 
thrace were erected : that of the present village bears the 
Gattilusio coat of arms upon one of its stones, — the eagle 
of the Byzantine emperors, the cross with the four B's in the 
interior corners being peculiar to the Paleologos family. 




COAT OF ARMS OF THE GATTILUSII. SAMOTHRACE. 



The most interesting of the three castles is that on the 
east, upon the northern coast, at the mouth of one of the 
water-courses. The remaining tower has given the name 
Pyrgos to the spot. Its walls are of exceeding strength, 
so that the narrow, brick-vaulted staircase which leads 
from the first to the second story is built within their 
thickness, and yet leaves enough at each side for support 
and security. The situation and arrangement of the ruin 
are exceedingly picturesque. Pyrgos is one of the most 
attractive spots of all Greek shores. A cool brook runs 
from the foot of the cliffs, whence it has fallen as a 
silvery cascade, past green and wooded banks to the sea, 
which it enters by the side of this crumbling monument of 
a proud and adventurous race, now almost more forgotten 
than the ancient Greeks who preceded it in possession of 
the island. Shepherds who were here guarding a herd of 
goats told us a legend, also related to Conze when he 
visited the island. A beautiful princess, it was said, lived 
with her two brothers in the strong castle of which this 
tower was a part. One day, as she was walking upon the 
sea-beach, — which just here is broad and inviting, — she 



142 ARCHjEOL ogical institute. 



was surprised by a strong man, who had descended from 
his dwelling in the mountain which towers high above, a 
spot still pointed out by the shepherds as the cave of the 
powerful man. When her brothers found that she was 
pregnant, they roughly demanded the name of her lover ; 
and, although she long evaded, they yet forced her to ac- 
knowledge it. The brothers thereupon drew lots, and the 
one chosen went out into the highlands above, lay in wait 
for the strong man, fell suddenly upon him, and murdered 
him in a spot still marked by tradition. The story doubt- 
less shadows forth some actual event of Italian vendetta, 
as it appeared to the wild race of Greeks who inhabited 
the island before the Turkish conquest, — the daughter of 
a comandante, living far from the accustomed luxury of 
Genoese palaces, a concealed lover, and the covert ven- 
geance of family honor. 

It was during the period of Lesbian supremacy that Ciriaco 
di Pizzicolli of Ancona — the enthusiastic pioneer of Greek 
travel, whose descriptions of the Orient, especially of the 
state of the ruins of Athens at the middle of the fifteenth 
century are so valuable — visited Samothrace upon his sec- 
ond voyage to the East. The island was already in a state 
of ruin which could not have differed greatly from its pres- 
ent condition. Eighteen years after his visit (1462) Lesbos 
fell into the hands of the Turks, and with it, if not some 
short time before, the islands of the Thracian Sea. The 
Gattilusii were the first Catholic princes conquered by the 
advancing power of the Ottomans. The last of the family 
upon the throne, Nicolo Gattilusio, had murdered his elder 
brother to gain possession . of the government, and yet 
hardly made a show of resistance against the more and 
more frequent incursions of the Turks. The city of Lesbos 
was surrendered by the intrigues of a bastard relation, 
Luchino Gattilusio, with Mahomet's general, Mahmoud 
Pasha. The Christian prince endeavored to gain the favor 
of his conqueror by embracing Islamism ; but the sultan, 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



143 



despising such cowardice and treachery, had both the Gat- 
tilusii transported to Byzantium and there executed, con- 
fiscating their extensive private property. The cruelties 
of the Turkish officials upon the capture of Samothrace 
have already been mentioned. After those dreadful scenes 
the island sank into the lethargic condition which has 
befallen all the more remote and commercially unimportant 
Turkish possessions. 

Since then Samothrace has been visited by very few 
of the travellers who see its high peak as they pass into the 
much frequented channel to Constantinople and Odessa. 
It was nearly four centuries after the account left by 
Ciriaco before another was given. Von Richter visited 
the island in 181 5, and his interesting account was pub- 
lished seven years after in a book which is the best 
monument to one who found so untimely a grave while in 
the midst of his investigations. 1 Three more reports were 
offered before the French Ecole cT Athenes called the atten- 
tion of its members to the island. 2 In 1853 several frag- 
ments of sculpture were brought from Samothrace to Paris, 
and three years later some slight investigations were made 
under the auspices of the French Empire. 3 The most 
thorough account of the island has been given by the Aus- 
trians, under the eminent archaeologist, Alexander Conze ; 
first, in the above mentioned work on the four islands of the 
Thracian Sea, the result of a private journey, and later 
in the report on the excavations which were undertaken in 
1873 and 1874 with funds supplied by the Austrian Minis- 

1 Otto Friedrichs von Richter. Wallfahrten im Morgenlande. Aus 
seinen Tagebuchern und Briefen dargestellt von Johann Philip Gustav 
Ebers. Berlin. 1822. 

2 Report of Messrs. Blau and Schlottmann in the Verhandlungen der 
Konigl. Preuss. Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin. Oct. 25, 1855. — 
De Behr. Recherches sur l'histoire des temps heroiques de la Grece. 
Paris. 1856 — A. Conze. Reise auf den Inseln des Thrakischen Meeres. 
Hannover, i860. 

3 G. Deville et E. Coquart. Rapport. Archives des Missions Scienti. 
fiques. 



144 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



try of Public Instruction. The results of the first year's 
operations have been published in a work which is a model 
of thoroughness ; 1 those of the second season are still 
waiting for an artistic restoration of the Nike, but their 
appearance may soon be expected. It is needless to 
add that, after investigation so wisely directed and luxu- 
riously published at government expense, there remains 
little or nothing to be expected from further excavations or 
archaeological research upon the island. Attention is the 
more likely to be diverted from Samothrace, as there 
remain so many other sites of equal or greater importance 
which have received no especial investigation, where exca- 
vations will open a virgin soil. 

Sailing eastward, upon the north of Samothrace we 
pass several hot springs, a great gift of Nature, which 
would be of the utmost importance were the island 
properly cared for. They are visited every summer by 
one or two families from the main-land, and should 
prove a great attraction as their fame extends and ar- 
rangements are gradually made to facilitate their use. 
The few visitors to the waters now content themselves with 
the simplest huts, and the site is entirely deserted in winter. 
At the eastern extremity of the island, its largest brook 
flows through a beautiful grove of oak and plane trees, where 
is a luxuriance of vegetation entirely unequalled in any 
other of the Aegean Islands, a paradise among their bare and 
sunburnt rocks. It brings to mind the epithet vXrjeaaa 
bestowed upon Samothrace by Homer. On leaving this 
inviting spot, a heavy north wind carried the "Dorian" 
again to the Asiatic coast, past the gray-brown hills of 
Tenedos, and past the mole, then marked by a line of 
breakers, which sheltered the ancient port of Alexandria 
Troas. The city was once the second in importance of the 

1 Archaologische Untersuchungen auf Samothrake. AusgefUhrt im 
Auftrage des k. k. Ministeriums fur Kultus und Unterricht von Alex. Conze, 
Alois Ilauser, George Niemann. Wien. 1875. 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



145 



eighteen towns which bore the name of Alexander, which 
in this case was given it not by the conqueror himself, but 
by his successor, Lysimachus. Its situation, before the 
mouth of the Hellespont, which can be entered only with 
favorable winds, is wisely chosen, and would have deprived 
the opposite Tenedos of many of its signal advantages 
had it been possible to provide adequate shelter, by larger 
moles, for the fleets of vessels which are often obliged to 
wait in this vicinity. The ruins are scattered upon the 
oak-grown slopes, for the most part not visible from the 
sea. 

Shelter from the increasing wind was finally found under 
the lee of Cape Baba, the historically celebrated Lectum. 
The squalid little Turkish village upon the rocky slope seems 
to be on the site of the town which Strabo mentions as here 
situated ; its castle commands the entrance to the Gulf of 
Adramyttium. Fragments of an ancient mole, built of colos- 
sal blocks of granite, still rise above the water, and some- 
what shelter the port from the storms which have made this 
promontory notorious. The land eastward from the cape, 
the northern coast of the gulf, is high, — a rocky plateau, 
descending in most places abruptly to the water. A similar 
conformation occurs, farther on, at the site of Assos. Here 
the little port is at the foot of the steep elevation upon which 
the city stood. It is still sheltered by remains of an an- 
cient mole. There was once a long breakwater here, which 
is mentioned by Strabo. It seems doubtful whether the 
present short mole, apparently repaired in the Middle Ages, 
is identical with that of antiquity, and could have afforded 
all the protection necessary for the port of the once com- 
mercially important Assos against the southern storms 
which in winter-time sweep with fury from the opposite 
Lesbian coast. Other boulders may be seen beneath the 
water in a certain regularity ; but no distinct outline of 
further shelter can be followed beyond that at present 
existing. The port of Assos must have been crowded with 

10 



146 A R CHs£ OL 0 GICA L INSTITUTE. 



shipping at the period of the city's supremacy, and it seems 
to have retained somewhat of its ancient maritime renown 
as late as the travels of the Apostles Paul and Luke, when 
the principal edifices of the upper town were already 
overthrown. The little enclosure at present existing can 
admit only ten or twelve coasting vessels, of a maximum 
draught of two metres. The trading ships of antiquity 
seldom exceeded these humble dimensions, and were in all 
respects more comparable to the light, keelless crafts of the 
modern Greeks than to the small vessels of English and 
American waters. 

There are now standing two houses and a magazine 
at this port, the station of Greek tradesmen, who export 
grain and the acorn-cups of the quercus aegilops (cerris), 
the stunted oak-tree of the surrounding country. The 
latter find a use like that of gall-nuts in the dyeing of cloth. 
Beyond these natural products of insignificant quantity, 
there is nothing to attract commerce to the northern 
Adramyttian coast, unless it be the striped mats woven in 
the poor harems of the Turkish village of Bayram, Bay- 
ramkoi, or Bayram-kalessi, as it is variously known, which 
stands above, upon the ruins of the ancient city. The 
languid inhabitants of its miserable huts are rarely vis- 
ited by traders, and they require few imports. The only 
article of foreign manufacture in general use seemed to be 
Viennese lucifer matches. 

The village is behind the ancient acropolis, which rises 
steep from the high plain, very near its sudden descent 
to the water. The summit of the acropolis is thus so 
directly above the port that a person standing upon its 
border, within a few steps of the southern stylobate of the 
temple, can look directly down into the holds of the vessels 
beneath. The ascent from the sea is the steepest and 
stoniest conceivable; the break-neck position of the city 
was notorious even in antiquity, among a people who found 
nothing remarkable in the climb to the Acrocorinthos or 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



H7 



to the acropolis of Segesta. Stratonicus, an Athenian 
musician and poet, famed for his witty remarks, applied 
to it the line of the sixth book of the Iliad, — 

*Acrcrov W, <5s Kev Oacrarov SXiOpov 7rdpa0' 1/07011, 

playing upon the adverb gWov. Art has done surprisingly 
little to ease the natural difficulty of the ascent ; here 
and there are fragments of ancient granite paving or 
polygonal retaining walls, but for the greater part one is 
obliged to scramble up the side of the natural rock. Don- 
keys take a roundabout way, diminishing the inclination of 
the road by increasing its length. If either of the trodden 
paths be deserted, the climb generally has to be performed 
with hands as well as feet. The plateau stretches far away 
to the west, falling again towards the north and east to 
the valley of the brook Tusla, which, encircling the city, 
reaches the sea a little way farther on. 

The meadows bordering upon the brook are by nature 
exceedingly fertile ; they readily account for the celebrity 
which Assos attained under the Lydians as the grain 
magazine of the surrounding country. The quality of its 
wheat was so superior that the kings of Persia imported it 
to distant Susa for their private use, — a luxury much dis- 
approved of by Strabo. Pasturers of: herds were never 
willing servants of Demeter ; and now that the Turks, a 
people by nature nomadic and possessed with a supreme 
contempt for agriculture, have dwelt in the land for four 
centuries, this fertile plain brings forth but a small fraction 
of what it might be made to produce by thorough cultiva- 
tion. The invincible repugnance of the Turk for all tilling 
of the soil is a characteristic of the greatest political and 
economical importance, especially as their contempt for the 
handling of the spade and the hoe seems to have communi- 
cated itself in full measure to other races inhabiting Asia 
Minor, as the Armenians and Jews. The Greeks alone, 
seeing in agriculture an immediate pecuniary advantage, 



148 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



produce the grain and vegetables absolutely necessary for 
subsistence. In regions where Greeks are not tolerated, 
the most fertile meadows have become barren wastes. 

The ancient city of Assos was grouped around the vol- 
canic cliff which rises from the plateau, in much the same 
manner as was Athens at the foot of its acropolis ; its 




ACROPOLIS OF ASSOS. FROM THE HIGHEST POINT OF THE 
PLATEAU, N. W. 



ruins are the most interesting remains of the Troad, 
and in some respects of all Asia Minor. The extent of 
the closely-built town is marked by the magnificent forti- 
fication walls. These massive structures follow the con- 
formation of the ground in such a manner as especially to 
protect the points by nature most exposed to the attack 
of an advancing enemy. The stone of which the wall was 
built is a reddish ferruginous trachyte, cut into rectangu- 
lar blocks, filleted carefully at the joints, and laid in exact 
horizontal courses without mortar, being bonded from face 
to face by headers. The interior spaces of the wall be- 
tween these veils, from about one metre to one metre and 
a half broad, were apparently left hollow; they are now 
choked with rubbish, which prevents an adequate exami- 
nation. Throughout the entire length of the fortifications 
which remain, over three kilometres, the wall is built with 
unvarying care. The greater part of the circuit around 
the acropolis can be traced ; it is only at the north, near the 
precipitous descent from the present village to the valley 
of the brook, that its position is for any extent uncertain. 
The gateways were flanked with towers, the lower parts of 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



149 



which, provided with loop-holes, are standing. In the 
gates themselves the bolt and pivot-holes are visible. 
The fortifications present, in every respect, an unequalled 
opportunity to study a class of Greek stone-work of which 
we have little knowledge. 

The walls of Assos are as different as possible from 
the rough ramparts of Samothrace. One cannot ascribe 
this dissimilarity to any known difference in age ; in 
neither case is there the slightest ground upon which 
to base an opinion as to the time of the erection 
of these great masses of masonry. Above the gate- 
openings of Assos there are circular and pointed blind 
arches, cut from the horizontal courses. This manner- 
ism, common enough in Greek remains, as at Ephesus, 
Thoricos, Messene, etc., by no means speaks for great 
antiquity, as is sometimes supposed by those who argue 
that at the time when such a form was adopted the 
principle of the keystone arch was necessarily unknown. 
The exceeding exactness of the stone-cutting, and the 
wonderful state of preservation of some parts of the wall, 
also incline to the assumption of a late date of building; 
but, on the other hand, there is no period of the city's 
history, after the Persian conquest, which readily explains 
the erection of so gigantic fortifications. " Nature and 
art," as Strabo says, " had indeed united to make Assos a 
stronghold." The condition in which the walls at present 
stand shows the remark of Texier to be hardly an exagge- 
ration : " They seem rather a commenced and unfinished 
work than a ruin." They deserve more attention than has 
hitherto been bestowed upon them, and would repay a 
more complete and more accessible publication than now 
exists. 

The town, within the outline of these fortifications, was 
divided into two parts by another wall, — weaker, and not 
provided with towers, — which runs from a re-entering angle 
of the western circuit to the cliff of the acropolis. The 



150 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



southern and larger of these enclosed spaces, on an inclined 
strip of the plateau which remains between the acropolis and 
the declivity to the sea, contains the chief ruins of the 
lower city, overthrown in indescribable confusion. The 
irregular ground must have been terraced in antiquity, 
somewhat as is the steep upon which the former city of 
Syra is situated. It is covered with the ruins of buildings 
of every description, all of the local stone ; there is not a 
fragment of marble as large as one's hand to be found far 
and wide around the city. The lime-burner has made 
more thorough work at Assos than at any other site of 
Greek antiquity. Great quantities of mortar were neces- 
sary for the coarse masonry of the towers and cisterns 
built by the Genoese rulers in the Middle Ages, and for 
all the more recent structures of Assos, — built of a material 
so hard as to defy superficial cutting, thus leaving wide 
interstices between the separate stones. But the necessities 
of the mediaeval and modern town itself are not sufficient 
to explain the destruction of every fragment of limestone 
in Assos. It may reasonably be supposed that a number 
of kilns existed here in the Byzantine period, and supplied 
neighboring ports with their produce until the material of 
the neighborhood was entirely consumed. 

These ruins would have been incomparably interesting if 
the marble, which, from the analogy of other Greek cities 
of Asia Minor, and notably of the Troad, must have existed 
upon the plateau, had not thus been swept away. The re- 
mains of coarser materials are, however, themselves of great 
extent, and are sufficiently important to insure the atten- 
tion of science. The ruins of Assos fully warrant the 
opinion of that eminent authority, Colonel Leake, who 
thinks that they give perhaps the most perfect idea of a 
Greek city that anywhere exists. Those of the town are 
thrown together in the wildest disorder, — antae, columns, 
and their members lying upon the foundations of the 
buildings. It is only occasionally that a granite column 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 151 

or carefully built wall still stands upright. Almost all the 
architectural members are Doric, generally of late Greek 
character. The prevalence of this style is in great measure 
due to the hardness of the stone, granite and volcanic 
rocks lending themselves more readily to the broad and 
simple form of the Doric than to any other style. The 
carving of Ionic or Corinthian capitals in such a material 
is almost impossible. Lighter and more elegant structures 
must have disappeared under the lime-burner's gleaning. 

Prominent in the confusion are enormous blocks, attrib- 
utable to the parallel walls of a stadium or agora, and the 
semi-circular auditory of a theatre. The latter is in an 
exceptionally fine state of preservation, doubtless the most 
perfect of the many theatres of Asia Minor and, in some 
respects, of all to be found in Greek' lands. It has been 
partially overthrown by an earthquake, but the greater 
number of the seats are almost perfectly intact, as well as 
the vaulted entrances and even part of the stage. Unques- 
tionably of the Roman period, it offers many peculiarities 
when compared with contemporary buildings of like char- 
acter, approaching very nearly in arrangement to that ad- 
vocated by Vitruvius. The seats are partly worked from 
an inclination of the ground. Although situated far below 
the acropolis, they are still high enough to give a grand 
and beautiful view to the spectators, who, facing south, 
could look far across the Gulf of Ida to the promontory 
of Musconisia, and to the noble and pleasant island of 
Lesbos, dear to the Greek heart. 

The enclosure of the ancient Assos, upon the other 
side of the division wall, north and northwest of the 
acropolis, where stands the present village of Bayram, 
seems to have been an addition to the city's original ex- 
tent, and was perhaps not so thickly built upon as the 
southern terraces. The Greeks have preferred in all ages 
the southern exposure, recommended by Xenophon, when 
not subject to the reflection of the sun upon the sea; 



152 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



their towns are often in still hotter and dryer situations 
even than Assos. The ruins upon the northern side of 
the acropolis seem to show that ground not to have been 
chosen as the original or principal position of the city; 
the remains there are not well preserved, being built into 
and covered by the present hovels. 

The mighty granite blocks of the Mount Ida range, from 
which almost all the houses of the southern Troad are con- 
structed, appear strangely out of place when made to assume 
the squalid architectural forms of Turkish huts, originally 
decided by the mud and sun-dried bricks of which they else- 
where consist. From the universal verdict of travellers, the 
inhabitants of Bayram have obtained an unenviable repu- 
tation. Their village now seems partially deserted. Above 
it rises the volcanic acropolis, dry as the dryest deme of 
Attica, and with as beautiful and majestic an outline as 
that of the treeless mountains which bound the Athenian 
plain. It is now entirely deserted ; blinking owls sit in 
the clefts of its dark gray ruins, and the unwonted sound 
of the visitor's footstep disturbs the whirring partridge, the 
shy bird rising from the midst of one of the most populous 
of ancient cities. The acropolis is a mighty block, trun- 
cated like a footstool, with two steps, the highest being 
towards the sea. It was not at all fortified. Its steep 
sides, from which much of the coarse stone of the build- 
ings of the town below was apparently quarried, hardly 
needed any such protection against the primitive attacks to 
which it might be exposed in antiquity. The fortifications 
of Assos were restricted to its outer walls. 

The mosque of Bayram, an early Byzantine church little 
altered for Mahometan ritual, stands upon the edge of the 
acropolis, next to the town. The building was apparently 
erected upon antique foundations. Near it there are ex- 
tensive subterranean cisterns, now unused, — immense con- 
structions, from fourteen to sixteen metres deep. These 
and the ruined mediaeval watch-tower near by were probably 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



153 



built during the time of the Gattilusii ; from the height of 
the latter a great part of the Princedom of Lesbos could be 
overlooked. The interior of the tower could not be ex- 
amined, as the entrance is choked with rubbish fallen from 
the walls above, and erected as a barricade. Many blocks 
of Greek workmanship must have been built into it, and 
could be easily recovered. The Genoese occupation of the 
country is still familiar to the inhabitants of Bayram, to 
whom all antiquities, of whatever age, are Frankish. The 
summit of the acropolis is confined ; the large temple which 
was upon the higher step took up the greater part of its 
extent. It stood almost upon the southern edge of the 
cliff, and must have afforded a magnificent spectacle from 
the sea and from the port beneath. 

All Doric temples are built to be seen with the perspec- 
tive horizon far below the stylobate ; many peculiarities of 
the style are to be explained only by this consideration. 
The situation of the temple of Assos rivals even that of the 
Athenian Parthenon ; it was as conspicuous from the sea as 
that of Sunium, and as favorably situated for the city and 
the inland country as that of Segesta. The building is at 
present entirely overthrown; its stones are scattered over 
all the acropolis, some even rolled from the height into 
the eastern valley of the brook. The grandes constructions 
militaires modernes, which stood upon its plan at the time 
of Texier's measurements, and seem to have been a seri- 
ous hindrance, have since been entirely demolished, and 
some blocks of the temple structure, which will assist in 
its restoration, were readily found. Among these may be 
mentioned a corner block of the tympanon corona, which 
will supplant the fallacious method of determining the 
pitch of the gable by the inclination of the cornice mutules 
beneath ; unornamented stones of the exterior architrave, 
fragments of the door, and more perfect triglyphs. On the 
other hand, it must be confessed that, without some digging, 
and a small derrick to overturn heavier blocks, it would be 



154 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL IXSTITUTE. 



impossible to verify or refute several points definitely given 
by Texier, such as the arrangement of the temple plan, its 
exact extent, the position of the cella wall, and even the 
height of the columns, though this would be easy from the 
excessive diminution of the high drums, were it possible 
carefully to measure them, half buried as they are in the 
earth. The statement that the temple was a hexastyle 
peripteros, with thirteen columns in length, is apparently a 
mere supposition, which may be doubted from the analogy 
of all other archaic temples known, none of which have so 
small a number of side-columns. An accurate determina- 
tion of these points is greatly to be desired. The meas- 
urements given by Texier are in the main correct, though 
the details varv so much amon? themselves in dimensions 
that absolute precision in any one number is out of the 
question. All the architectural members preserve a won- 
derful sharpness of outline ; they seem as fresh as when 
first cut, owing to the exceeding hardness of their sub- 
stance. This admirable preservation is especially fortunate 
for the sculptured remains, such as the reliefs of the archi- 
trave and metopes, now preserved in the Louvre, and 
well-known from their important place in the history of 
Greek sculpture. 

From the acropolis the ruins of the ancient city can be 
seen stretching far away in every direction. A multitude 
of sarcophagi lie in a zone to the westward, which ex- 
tends from the sea to the descent to the brook. These 
tombs stand closely crowded together upon each side of a 
sacred way, generally in an entirely irregular arrangement. 
All those preserved are of granite and trachytic stone, 
built without mortar and without dowels. It is futile to 
attempt to gain from their material any understanding of 
the strange ancient mention of the flesh-devouring stone 
peculiar to Assos, which has given to such tombs in modern 
ages the name " sarcophagus." Apparently all have been 
opened and their contents rifled. In cases where the cover 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



155 




SARCOPHAGUS AT ASSOS. 



was too heavy to be removed, the sides have been broken 
out. Some of the tombs have been dragged away at various 
times towards Cape Lectum, and even across the brook to 
neighboring villages, where they serve as well-troughs, for 
which their forms are adapted. Those remaining upon the 
field are generally in their original position and are often 
excellently preserved, the materials of those now existing 
at all not being of sufficient value to attempt their removal 
or destruction. The forms of the funeral monuments vary 
much ; many are of elongated rectangular plan, with gabled 
cover and acroterias. 

Beside the simplest stone coffins, there are the remains 
of large mausoleums, at times several tombs upon one 
foundation, perhaps the enclosure of a whole family. The 
larger structures often appear so similar to a temple aedicn- 
la that it would be impossible to determine their destina- 
tion surely without long examination and the overturning 
of many fallen blocks. These broad fields of the dead are 



156 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



of great importance in architectural respects, and are truly 
worthy of far more attention than has been bestowed upon 
them. No views of the sarcophagi and the other remains 
of this part of Assos have been published, with the ex- 
ception of two careless sketches in Fellows's " Journal." 
From the entire lack of inscriptions, which must have dis- 
appeared with* the marble upon which they were cut, it 
seems impossible to ascertain the exact age of any of the 
monuments of Assos. Granite and basalt bear no letters. 
The date of the great temple upon the acropolis is espe- 
cially doubtful, although its sculptured remains lead to 
conclusions which prove it anterior to the fifth century 
B. C. It is always difficult, however, to distinguish that 
which is archaic and primitive in Greek art from that 
which is barbarized and provincial. The history of the 
city alone can throw light upon the periods in which the 
erection of so colossal a temple, the building of the fortifi- 
cation walls and of the theatre and agora, and the arrange- 
ment of so extended a necropolis, could be assumed to 
have taken place. 

Assos was successively under Aeolian Greeks, Lydians, 
and Persians. It was a colony of Methymna, the native 
town of the singer Arion, one of the six chief cities of the 
ancient Lesbos. That powerful island, celebrated in the 
early Greek ages as the home of lyric poetry, repre- 
sented the highest contemporary advance of Hellenic 
civilization. Assos was its chief colony at the time of the 
greatest Lesbian power ; and the favorably situated settle- 
ment doubtless early rivalled the greatness of the cities of 
the mother island. For some five centuries it flourished 
and increased, possessing a large tract of the surrounding 
country, until, when taken in 560 B. C. by Croesus, it was 
the strongest and most important place in the Troad. On 
the downfall of the Lydian rule, after its fourteen years 
of supremacy in Assos, the city passed into the hands of 
the Persians. 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



157 



During the reign of Artaxerxes it was the residence of 
the eunuch Hermeias, who here braved the power of the 
monarch until, betrayed by his enemies, he was sewed into 
the skin of an ox, dragged to the Persian capital, and cru- 
cified. Hermeias, a scholar of Plato, and himself the au- 
thor of an esteemed work upon the immortality of the 
soul, had attracted to Assos his fellow pupils, Xenocrates 
and Aristotle, the latter of whom was further related to 
him by marriage. The city appears to have been one of 
the chief seats of refinement and learning during the fourth 
century B. C. After the Roman period, it soon became 
Christian, perhaps because of the proximity of the seven 
churches of Asia, the influence of which spread espe- 
cially to the north. The early change to Christianity 
accounts, without doubt, for the entire overthrow of the 
larger monuments and temples, many of which bear the 
marks of wilful destruction. It was fortunate, for the fur- 
ther preservation of the remains, that Assos became al- 
most entirely deserted. The lower town bears no trace of 
dwellings later than the first Christian centuries. Byzan- 
tines, Genoese, and Turks have contented themselves with 
the fortification of the acropolis, and with the small collec- 
tion of dwelling-houses upon its northern side. 

The ruins of Assos were slightly mentioned by M. de 
Choiseul, in the " Voyage Pittoresque." The first traveller 
who gave any distinct account of them was Leake, Avho 
visited the site in 1800, first publishing his short notice in 
Walpole's Memoirs, twenty years afterwards, 1 and again 
including it in his own Journal. 2 Dr. Hunt saw the ruins 
one year after Leake. His excellent report was the first no- 
tice printed concerning Assos. 3 It is an error of this writer 

1 Travels in Various Countries of the East, being a continuation of Me- 
moirs relating to European and Asiatic Turkey, etc. Edited by Robert 
Walpole. London. 1820. 

2 Journal of a Tour in Asia Minor. By William Martin Leake. London. 
1824. 

3 Report of Dr. Hunt in Memoirs relating to European and Asiatic 
Turkey. Edited by Robert Walpole. London. 1817. 



158 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



to state the city walls as five miles in length. This is greatly 
exaggerated ; their maximum extent is not half that distance. 
He was succeeded by Von Richter, in 1815, 1 and by Michaud, 
one of the authors of the " Correspondance d'Orient," in 
1830. 2 The latter writer, a French academician, has some 
remarkable ideas. The sculptured architrave reliefs of the 
great temple, generally interpreted as scenes from the myths 
of Pirithous and Proteus, to him " represent different scenes 
of the customs of the ancient people of Assos," whom he 
seems to have imagined as sphinxes, centaurs, and heroes, 
accustomed to struggle with marine monsters. The Byzan- 
tine church, " moitie carre, moitie" coniqae" he speaks of as 
" tin ancien temple de forme elegante" maintaining that " la 
religion musulmane nous a ainsi conserve dans son integrite 
premiere tin monument appartenant aitx beaux ages de la 
Grece!' By far the best of these travellers' descriptions is 
the account given by Prokesch von Osten, who visited the 
ruins of Assos in 1826, in his most admirable book of 
Oriental Notes, which justly led to the author's preferment 
to the highest official position in the gift of his govern- 
ment. 3 The attention of the French seems to have been 
attracted to Assos by Michaud. Five years after Michaud's 
visit, Texier examined the ruins during his expedition to 
Asia Minor, publishing subsequently the only measure- 
ments and illustrations of the wall, gates, and temple which 
exist. Texier was commissioned by Guizot, then French 
Minister of Public Instruction. His drawings and descrip- 
tions were engraved and printed at government expense, in 
three immense volumes, in the second of which are the 
letterpress and plates concerning Assos. 4 It is from this 

1 Work cited above (p. 143). 

2 Correspondance d'Orient. Michaud et Ponjoulat. Paris. 1834. 

3 Denkwiirdigkeiten und Erinnerungen aus dem Orient, vom Ritter 
Prokesch von Osten. Aus Jul. Schneller's Nachlass heransgegeben von Dr. 
Ernst Miirsch. III. Band. Stuttgart. 1837. 

4 Description de l'Asie Mineure faite par ordre du Gouvernement Fran- 
cais de 1833 a 1837 et publiee par le Ministere de l'lnstruction Publique. 
Par Charles Texier. Deuxieme Partie. Deuxieme Volume. Paris. 1849. 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



159 



book alone that the world has derived all the information 
concerning the forms and dimensions of the remains at 
Assos which has served scholars for so many theories con- 
cerning the development of Greek art. Yet the " Descrip- 
tion of Asia Minor," in attempting to cover too wide a field, 
devotes only five plates to the extensive fortification walls 
and the temple, exclusive of the untrustworthy topographi- 
cal map and the engravings of the reliefs carried to France. 
During a second voyage to the East, Texier secured the 
sculptured architrave stones subsequently placed in the 
Louvre, the gift of Sultan Mahmoud II. to France. It is 
strange that these valuable reliefs remained so long upon 
the site, attracting as they had the notice of all travellers 
who visited Assos previous to their removal. Texier was 
followed by Fellows, who gave a good description of his 
visit of 1838, in a valuable journal. 1 

The last mention of the ruins was printed by Mr. Pullan, 
in 1865, four years after a hurried journey, in a book which 
is a partial translation of Texier's text, without the slight- 
est additions, illustrated by lithographic reproductions of 
the French engravings. 2 The last visit before our own to 
the neglected ruins was undertaken overland from Hissar- 
lik, by Drs. Virchow and Schliemann. Of this nothing has 
been published. It is not clear upon what authority Falk- 
ener stated, in 185 1, that the frieze of the great temple 
of Assos, with the exception of the guttae, is totally omit- 
ted ; at all events, this is an error. 3 

It only remains for the writer to give a most favora- 
ble report concerning the expectations which may be en- 
tertained from excavations upon this spot and from a 
thorough investigation of its ruins, both of which were 

1 A Journal written during an Excursion in Asia Minor. By Charles Fel- 
lows. London. 1839. 

2 The Principal Ruins of Asia Minor, illustrated and described. R. Pop- 
plewell Pullan. London. 1865. 

3 The Museum of Classical Antiquities. Volume I. No. 23. On the 
Ionic Heroum at Xanthus. London. 1851. 



i6o 



ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



beyond his power and aim at the time of his visit. Assos 
is one of the very few sites of a flourishing city of Greek 
antiquity where the earth has not been in the least over- 
turned in search of relics, either by authorized excavators, 
or by the destructive predatory digging of the inhabitants 
themselves for marketable fragments, vases, and coins. It 
is known to what extent the lower classes of Greeks have 
recently plundered the most promising ruins of Attica and 
the Peloponnesus, and how regular an income was formerly 
derived by the peasants of Calabria and Sicily from their 
independent discoveries. In a Turkish province, but rarely 
visited by Europeans, this robbery is impossible. The 
villagers of Assos are too fanatical to come readily into in- 
tercourse with unbelievers, or to allow unauthorized specu- 
lators to rummage in the earth of their neighborhood ; they 
are too limited in understanding to enrich themselves by 
the recovery of the treasures of antiquity, to them entirely 
insignificant. All that has been brought from Assos — and 
this includes some of the chief treasures of antique sculp- 
ture in Paris — was taken from the surface. The decline 
of the city's importance, and the contraction of its extent 
at an early period, were also favorable to the preservation of 
its remains. Assos was almost deserted at the beginning of 
the Christian era. It is true that the ruins have not been 
protected by earth washed down upon them by streams, a 
burial which has proved fortunate in several cases ; yet a 
dry soil has accumulated during centuries, perhaps suffi- 
cient to hide the blocks first overthrown as effectually as 
if they were buried six metres deep. The earth at Assos 
could be easily removed from the spots chosen for exami- 
nation. Trial-pits and the digging and carting away of 
such great masses of gravel and marshy soil as ren- 
dered the excavations at Olympia and Ephesus so expen- 
sive would not be necessary at Assos. Were the results 
to be encouraging or disappointing, they would, at all 
events, here be quickly arrived at. A small derrick and 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



161 



rollers would be necessary to displace the fallen stones ; 
an excavation beneath these would expose the entire plan 
of the ancient acropolis, so far as this may be preserved. 
Were the arrangement of the temple to be ascertained, it 
would be a gain for architectural archaeology which can 
hardly be overrated. The details of the elevation and 
its exact proportions would certainly be learned from a 
thorough examination of the site. Additional fragments 
of the sculptured decoration of the building might also be 
hoped for. A plain architrave block was found in the val- 
ley, which agreed exactly with the dimensions of those 
carried to France. This makes it probable that the sides 
of the temple were not ornamented by reliefs, and that 
these were restricted to the fronts, as are the sculptured 
metopes of the Theseum at Athens. 

The plan of the temple of Assos was without doubt 
hexastyle ; the architrave upon each front must have been 
nearly thirteen metres long. Texier discovered about 
sixteen metres' length of sculptured blocks, from which 
it may be concluded that at least both fronts bore these 
remarkable figures. The remaining ten metres, of a 
material not likely to excite wilful destruction, and secure 
from natural weathering, probably lie near at hand. Dr. 
Hunt mentions, among the architrave reliefs which lay 
upon the earth at the time of his visit, " three horses run- 
ning " : these were not among those taken away by Texier. 
Of the twenty sculptured metopes which must have existed, 
— if the front alone, according to the analogy of the arch- 
itrave reliefs, be supposed thus ornamented, — only three 
have been carried from the site. From the great wealth 
of sculptured decoration elsewhere employed upon the 
building, it must be concluded that gable groups also 
existed. If these were likewise of the hard stone, they 
may be expected to be found; if they were of marble, 
there is still the . possibility that their early fall may have 
kept them hidden beneath the overthrown ruins, secure 



162 ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE. 



from the mediaeval lime-burners. What an interesting 
Asiatic parallel to the Aeginetan marbles may here come 
to light ! 

The remains of the town below, though for the most 
part of a later period, are still worthy of thorough 
investigation. It is likely that much marble lies beneath 
the surface, and the domestic architecture of the Greeks 
could here be studied as at no other spot. No plans of 
the theatre, notwithstanding its admirable preservation, 
have been published, if we except the slight sketch in the 
topographical plan offered by Texier, where measure- 
ments are not given. Fragments near the spot may, upon 
adequate examination, lend themselves to a solution of 
the vexed question as to the thymele. A description 
and drawings of the sarcophagi without the city walls 
would be particularly desirable, and here much might 
be expected to be unearthed. The many fragments of 
carefully painted ancient vases which lie here seem to 
promise the existence of inimitable works of Greek pot- 
tery in the graves beneath. 

The situation of the ruins in Turkish territory greatly 
facilitates the obtaining of a favorable permission to under- 
take excavations, which are not to be entered upon in 
Greek lands save by the sacrifice to the Government of all 
that may be discovered. The latter consideration cannot 
be too much emphasized in view of the discouraging con- 
tracts which the officials of the Greek kingdom, and even 
of semi-independent Samos, have forced upon scientific 
societies desirou#t>f excavating. The immediate proximity 
of Bayranf to Mytiline, and its ready accessibility to Smyrna, 
would greatly favor an expedition. The village itself offers 
the most immediate necessities, and would obviate the great 
expense for the transport of all food and the erection of 
temporary lodgings, to which excavators upon such entirely 
desolate sites as Delos or Hissarlik have been exposed. 
The writer recommends the site to the attention of the 



NOTES ON GREEK SHORES. 



163 



American Archaeological Institute with assurance, aware 
that his favorable opinion concerning it is shared by emi- 
nent European authorities, who have had opportunity of 
examining its acropolis and wide-spread fields of ruins, or 
are acquainted with its present condition from trustworthy 
reports. A comprehensive and thorough publication of 
the remains of antiquity at Assos would supply a decided 
want. 

Joseph Thacher Clarke. 




University Press : John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. 





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